{"id":37,"date":"2020-11-05T09:22:02","date_gmt":"2020-11-05T14:22:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/history-2203-fall-2020-imiller\/?page_id=37"},"modified":"2020-12-21T18:41:49","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T23:41:49","slug":"narrative-of-the-event","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/history-2203-fall-2020-imiller\/narrative-of-the-event\/","title":{"rendered":"Narrative: The Story of the 1918 Flu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Background<\/b><\/span><\/h1>\n

Over the course of a year, the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, or \u201cSpanish Flu,\u201d traveled the globe, claiming up to 100 million lives worldwide. Before diving into the chronology of this disastrous disease spread, it\u2019s important to recognize the global context that allowed the disease to spread so rapidly and tremendously. In 1914, the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand lead Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia (Library of Congress n.d.). Within weeks, World War I had begun, with Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey fighting for the Central Powers and
\nRussia, Serbia, and France fighting for the Allied Powers. The United States entered the war in April of 1917, establishing a national draft and dozens of military camps across the country. It is widely agreed that World War I provided an unlikely vehicle for the spread of viruses. And, once the Influenza Pandemic took hold in human populations, \u201ctransmission in many places was greatly facilitated by wartime disruption and troop movements, and its pace was quickened by the vastly improved railroad networks that spanned the continents, and by the steamships that connected them with unprecedented efficiency,\u201d (Patterson and Pyle 1991, 10).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image credits: History.com<\/p><\/div>\n

Furthermore, the backdrop of World War I led to international censorship of disease spread and devastation. The desire to appear strong to foreign allies and enemies lead countries to publish unreliable and underplayed coverage of the Influenza Pandemic. In fact, the very reason this pandemic is so often called the \u201cSpanish Flu\u201d is based on this wartime context. Spain, being one of the only affected countries not actively involved in World War I, was the first country to internationally report the presence of influenza in the country in May of 1918 (History.com Editors 2020). Despite the fact that the Influenza Pandemic\u2019s first wave clearly began months earlier, the reputation of the \u201cSpanish Flu\u201d remains prevalent even today.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another concept worth acknowledging in the chronology of the Influenza Pandemic is that each individual country, and region for that matter, hit with the virus experienced the disaster in vastly varying ways. For sake of simplicity, this project analyzes the 1918 Pandemic with a focus on the United States. This is not to say, however, that other nations did not experience the disaster in meaningful ways, but rather to streamline the analysis of this disaster to focus on one individual national experience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Chronology<\/b><\/span><\/h1>\n

1st Wave<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

March<\/b>. <\/b>In March of 1918, the United States saw the first account of a strange flu-like illness infecting the people of Haskell, Kansas. Coinciding with the establishment of nationwide military camps, the beginnings of the pandemic reached Camp Funston in Kansas (1918 Pandemic Influenza Historic Timeline 2018). By mid-March, \u201c1,100 soldiers were admitted to the hospital, with thousands more sick in barracks,\u201d (Barry 2017, 36). In the following weeks, \u201c24 out of 36 large camps had outbreaks – sickening thousands,\u201d likely as a result of military movement across the country in preparation for mass deployment overseas (Barry 2017, 36).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

May. <\/b>In May, the first wave of the Influenza Pandemic seemed to die out, and the globe rejoiced at what looked like the end of this strange, spring flu. However, according to author and historian John M. Barry, \u201cthere were warnings, ominous ones,\u201d that the pandemic was far from over (Barry 2017, 36).\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

2nd Wave<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n
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Image credits: History.com<\/p><\/div>\n

September. <\/b>In September of 1918, it became clear in the United States that the Influenza Pandemic had returned, much worse and more virulent than before. This second wave was first noticed in the United States at Camp Devens, stationed outside of Boston, MA. At this military camp alone, 14,000 cases of influenza were reported, leading to over 750 deaths (1918 Pandemic Influenza Historic Timeline 2018). The chaos that the pandemic caused at Camp Devens – with overwhelmed hospitals, soldiers dying in barracks, and thousands of cases a day – would soon sweep the nation, leading to the cancellation of the military draft (Barry 2017, 37). <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

October. <\/b>Within the month alone, the Influenza Pandemic claimed over 195,000 lives in the United States (1918 Pandemic Influenza Historic Timeline 2018). While cities and states struggled to contain the spread of influenza, with varying quarantine, hygiene, and mask protocols as well as varying closures, \u201cpublic officials, determined to keep morale up, began to lie,\u201d (Barry 2017, 37). Without an understanding of the disease, or federal guidance and support, the devastation was national: Chicago closed \u201ctheatres, movie houses and night schools and prohibit public gatherings,\u201d New York City reported a \u201c40 percent decline in shipyard productivity,\u201d 53% of San Antonians fell ill, and Philadelphia saw over 12,000 deaths in a six-week window (1918 Pandemic Influenza Historic Timeline 2018).<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

November. <\/b>November of 1918 marked the end of the second wave of the Influenza Pandemic in the United States, although what brought about the end of the pandemic was a mystery at the time. Despite the severity of September and October, it seemed as though the illness traveled throughout the population enough for herd immunity to prevent further catastrophe.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

3rd Wave<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

January.<\/b> In January of 1918, a third wave of the Influenza Pandemic arose in the United States. This wave of the disease was \u201clethal by any standard except the second wave,\u201d and is likely thought to have been an \u2018aftershock\u2019 event due to the premature reopening of the United States (Barry 2017, 41). This, however, did not change the United States\u2019 plan for recovery, however. After time and staggered re-entry into society, life in the United States returned to normal.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Image credits: The BBC<\/p><\/div>\n

April. <\/b>The third wave of influenza in the United States largely subsided in the summer. April of 1919, however, marked a monumental moment for the Influenza Pandemic at the Versailles Peace Conference: \u201cwhile negotiating the end of World War I with other world leaders, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson\u201d collapsed (1918 Pandemic Influenza Historic Timeline 2018), with \u201ca 103 degree temperature, intense coughing fits, diarrhea and other serious symptoms,\u201d (Barry 2017, 41). Seeing as the pandemic was still widespread in Paris during April of 1919 and killed one of Wilson\u2019s staff members, it is highly likely that Wilson was a victim of this third wave of the Influenza Pandemic.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

In terms of curbing the pandemic, the United States was largely at the mercy of the invisible killer that was influenza. Although certain cities were able to mandate quarantines (New York City) or masks (San Francisco), federal, national action across was largely nonexistent and the success of regional remediation efforts was inconsistent. The true end of the pandemic in the United States can be credited to herd immunity; the illness burned through communities and couldn\u2019t spread any further.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is much about the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 that remains uncertain today. Namely, there is no scientific consensus regarding the biological origin of the virus, nor the reasoning behind the sheer virulence and fatality of the second wave of the pandemic. The death toll of the Influenza Pandemic is similarly shrouded in uncertainty, although a common trend among researchers is that as updated measuring systems and disease spread models are created, the estimated death toll of the Influenza Pandemic increases. A 1991 journal article attempting to track \u201cThe Geography and Mortality of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic\u201d placed the death toll at 24.7-39.3 million worldwide, with approximately 550,000 deaths in the United States alone (Patterson and Pyle 1991, 15). An updated account of the mortality, published in 2002, placed the death toll at 50-100 million worldwide, with approximately 675,000 deaths in the United States (Johnson and Mueller 2002, 114).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Regardless of the finite data, however, it is unequivocal that the disaster of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic catastrophically altered the globe, and jumpstarted a century\u2019s worth of research on pandemic disease.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Background Over the course of a year, the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, or \u201cSpanish Flu,\u201d traveled the globe, claiming up to 100 million lives worldwide. Before diving into the chronology of this disastrous disease spread, it\u2019s important to recognize the global context that allowed the disease to spread so rapidly and tremendously. In 1914, the assassination […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/full-width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-37","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/history-2203-fall-2020-imiller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/history-2203-fall-2020-imiller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/history-2203-fall-2020-imiller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/history-2203-fall-2020-imiller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/history-2203-fall-2020-imiller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/history-2203-fall-2020-imiller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/history-2203-fall-2020-imiller\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}