Learning from 1918’s pandemic. Or not.

Bill Knight column for 4-27, 28 or 29, 2020

In 1905, philosopher George Santayana in “The Life of Reason” wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

As the world copes with COVID-19, it would seem helpful to consider past plagues, especially 1918, when, as now, some moments were magic and others tragic. It’s especially relevant as Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp reopened many places there (days after the Pentagon announced extending the military travel ban from May 11 to June 30).

Strict orders on closings and social distancing in 1918 helped a post-plague economic recovery, according to research by an MIT professor and two Federal Reserve economists.

“Areas that acted early and aggressively with non-pharmaceutical interventions do not perform worse economically, at least in the medium term. If anything, they actually come out of the pandemic stronger,” said MIT’s Emil Verner, lead author with the Fed’s Sergio Correia and Stephan Luck. “Lifting restrictions too early could make the economy worse by leading to a resurgence of the virus in an even more destructive pandemic.

“We have to defeat the disease before the economy can go back to normal.”

Now, as then, anxious Americans want to stay safe, and eager people chafing under limitations also want to go out and resume their routines. Also similar, says “The Great Influenza” author John M. Barry, in 1918 “leaders were saying things like, ‘You have nothing to fear if proper precautions are taken’.”

In that pandemic 102 years ago, life continued in some form. Major League Baseball played a shortened  season, with the Cubs losing the World Series to the Red Sox, led by 23-year-old Babe Ruth, a hard-hitting pitcher who contracted the Spanish flu in May, bounced back to play, but was stricken again in October and recovered, then was traded to the Yankees.

Bestselling books that year included Booth Tarkington’s “The Magnificent Ambersons” and the first publication of “Elements of Style” by William Strunk Jr. Top records in 1918 included Enrico Caruso’s version of “Over There,” by George M. Cohan, and Al Jolson’s “Rock-A-Bye Your Baby with A Dixie Melody.” In the early movie industry, the first adaptation of “Tarzan of The Apes” grossed about $1 million, and Charlie Chaplin’s silent comedy “Shoulder Arms” came out shortly before World War I’s armistice. On stage, the Marx Brothers, living in LaGrange, Ill., performed the vaudeville circuit, and this month in 1918, they played six days in Chicago, followed by seven dates in St. Louis, and then shows in Champaign, Davenport and Rockford. They’d play before theater crowds in face masks and sitting in every other seat in alternate rows to practice social distancing.

Like today, some people were uninformed or decided to ignore doctors and go on as if there were no danger from the disease. Government censors on both sides of the war minimized reporting on influenza and its death rate globally to avoid distracting from war efforts. However, Spain was neutral in the war, so journalists there weren’t prohibited from reporting on the outbreak, and with their coverage the disease began to be called the “Spanish Flu.”

With more media since, people get more information, and multiple polls show about 60% of the nation remains worried about getting infected and lifting restrictions too soon.

In 1918, there were cries to return to “normalcy” regardless of medical advice, and under pressure some places relaxed restrictions and reopened many shuttered businesses. The flu did seem to fade that summer, but it returned forcefully in a few months, causing health officials to again ask people to avoid public gathering and isolate themselves. (Its resurgence was swift. In Hartford, Ct., for example, 13 cases were reported Sept. 20 and the next day there were 500; in October, 195,000 Americans died from the virus.)

Presently, state leaders such as Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and medical experts say reopening will require massive testing, tracing contacts and treating or quarantining as needed. But South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas may follow Kemp’s example in Georgia, which has some 21,000 cases and 850 deaths.

Recently writing in The Week magazine, Joel Mathis said, “It is possible that by trying to get Georgia back to business, Kemp could create the conditions for a new outbreak of COVID-19 while the local economy remains in the doldrums.”

As activist/scholar Noam Chomsky said, “There’s a good reason why nobody studies history.  It just teaches you too much.”