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How much does pandemic resemble the pandemic of 1918? Quite a bit - Deseret News
Aug 10, 2020 3 mins, 39 secs

SALT LAKE CITY — When the new coronavirus began ravaging the world, most people had no idea just how much damage a viral outbreak could do to the world’s health, wealth and social fabric.

Barry titled “The Great Influenza” chronicles how the 1918-19 influenza outbreak became the deadliest pandemic in history, and it offers both insight and warnings about how to mitigate future pandemics, which the author concludes are inevitable.

labs and making sure all governments report viral and disease outbreaks accurately to the World Health Organization.

The book provides details into everything from the rise of American medicine to how lingering effects of influenza could have led to President Woodrow Wilson’s abrupt decision to accept the Treaty of Versailles to end World War I when he’d consistently advocated for a much different end to the war.

The rejection of some to wearing masks as a way to slow the spread of COVID-19 is something that has blindsided Utah and national public health officials.

But officials in 1918 and 1919 actually issued mask mandates, according to Utah news reports, and for those who violated the rules, there were fines and sometimes arrests and jail time, including a Park City man who was arrested at a restaurant for not wearing a mask.

Greg Smoak, the director of the American West Center and an associate professor of history at the University of Utah, said the resistance and debate over the efficacy of masks may be similar, but the masks themselves were quite different.

“They were essentially gauze that would be tied behind your head,” Smoak said of the masks used in 1918-19.

“There were even bombings in response to mask mandates,” Smoak said.

Wilson never actually made a public statement about the influenza outbreak, which ultimately claimed the lives of an estimated 675,000 people.

Smoak points out that the reason the influenza outbreak was dubbed the “Spanish flu” was because Spain was neutral in World War I, and so its government didn’t censor media reports about the illness.

“Conspiracy theories are very comforting to people because they are simple explanations for complicated problems,” Smoak said.

“The more simple answer is that this is a natural process that has occurred countless times throughout human history,” Smoak said, “and it will continue to occur.”.

“We wish that people could learn from history,” he said.

Unlike COVID-19 — which is most deadly to those over 65 and with underlying health problems — the influenza pandemic struck down those in their prime, between the ages of 20 and 45.

The influenza outbreak of 1918-19 brought about many changes, both in the way public health officials learned to handle infectious diseases and in what researchers hoping to isolate causes and cures learned through their work, Barry noted.

“The experience of 1918 put in place certain health care infrastructure,” Smoak said.

Dunn said despite the fact that officials are grappling with some of the same issues, there were many lessons learned by the medical community that had an impact on containing COVID-19 outbreaks in America.

Even as Philadelphia health officials were warning that people should avoid crowds, politicians refused to cancel the parade, according to Barry’s book.

Barry pointed out that the number of people who rely on restaurants for food doubled in the century between the influenza outbreak and the writing of his book.

Because hospitals are now run like businesses, there are actually fewer hospital beds per capita than there were in 1918, he said.

That, he said, could be a problem in a future pandemic, especially when it came to intensive care unit beds — an issue that was illustrated when COVID-19 numbers spiked in New York and New Jersey.

Dunn said public health is chronically underfunded in most places, in part because it’s easy to forget about how critical it is when there are no major issues

Dunn said public health officials and politicians are learning that they have to work together to help people understand how to best care for each other when it comes to infectious disease

“It reinforced the need to form good partnerships with the public before a pandemic hits,” she said

“As horrific as the disease itself was, public officials and the media helped create the terror — not by exaggerating the disease but by minimizing it, by trying to reassure,” he said

Lastly, Barry admonished ordinary people not to let their fear in a pandemic undermine their humanity

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