In the face of this evidence of brewing disaster, what did the authorities do? As little as possible. To win the war was THE thing. When a Norwegian vessel with 200 active flu cases and three dead men on board docked in New York on August 12, the city health commissioner announced that all of the sick put ashore had pneumonia, not flu, and added, “You haven’t heard of our doughboys getting it, have you? You bet you haven’t, and you won’t.” I’m sure the irony in that statement was totally unintentional. The chief surgeon of the New York port of embarkation was even more blunt: “We can’t stop this war on account of Spanish or any other kind of influenza.” The same day that the first civilian case of flu was admitted to Boston City Hospital (September 3) 3,000 sailors and shipyard workers marched down the streets of Boston in a “Win-the-War-for-Freedom” parade—no doubt spreading the disease in their wake. As late as October 4, with money for the war effort running short, the Chicago health department gave the okay for a huge Liberty Loan parade, assuring the participants they would not catch the disease if they went home, stripped, rubbed their bodies dry, and took a laxative! To say that the authorities were still in a state of denial is to put it mildly. Nor was the German enemy itself without suspicion. It was suggested that German U-boats were landing infected agents on American soil. And as the fall epidemic spread, the U.S. Public Health Service was obliged, under political pressure, to waste its limited resources on investigating whether Bayer, producing aspirin under what had originally been a German patent, was poisoning its customers with flu germs.
...
Thursday October 10, the decision was reversed. Mayor Madgett, this time acting as chairman of the board of health, issued an order
“closing theaters, churches, schools, pool rooms and card rooms as a precautionary measure against influenza.” Military pickets were posted around the perimeter of the Hastings College campus, to prevent resident students from leaving. But students living at home in Hastings were still allowed to come and go—”if there is no sickness of any kind in the home.” Obviously, irrational compromises in policy were still the order of the day. Irrational “home remedies” were, as well, ranging from garlic amulets to baking powder in water, as recorded in the Tribune. There were 81 recorded cases in Hastings by October 14; 198 cases four days later. Drs. Brown and J. H. Hahn were themselves reported ill with influenza. The obituary columns of the Tribune were littered with flu victims. And, mirroring the epidemic worldwide, these were primarily previously-healthy people in their twenties and thirties. Flu has always disproportionally killed the very young and the very old; the 1918 epidemic killed a hefty share of people in the prime of life. Secondary bacterial pneumonia, particularly with the germ that came to be known as Hemophilus influenzae, a common pathogen in younger people, probably played a major role. But as previously noted, the flu virus itself was particularly aggressive that year.
On October 21, the Nebraska State Board of Health placed a ban on all public gatherings, indoors and outdoors....
Schools had reopened November 5. Students were supposed to wear masks to prevent the spread of respiratory disease, but this met with resistance. By the week of November 17, a quarter of the students were reported absent. Similarly, there was a major upswing in flu cases following the victory parade that marked the Armistice of November 11. It was becoming apparent that half-measures in behalf of the public health were as good as nothing at all. On Thursday December 5, 36 new cases of flu were reported to the city physician.
All schools in the county, including Hastings College, were ordered closed until December 30. Churches and theaters were closed, and restrictions were placed on businesses’ evening hours. The State Board of Health issued rules for handling influenza as an “absolutely quarantinable disease,” with entire families remaining under quarantine in their homes “until four days after the fever disappears in the patient.” Notices were printed to post on the doors of affected families’ homes. No one other than an attending physician or nurse was allowed to enter. Now that the war was over, full attention was finally being paid to the enemy within. Whether these actions had the intended effect, or the epidemic was simply burning itself out, by mid-December, flu cases were sharply down.
Effective Sunday, December 22, churches and theaters were allowed to reopen—but attendees were only allowed to sit in every other row! This restriction was lifted on Tuesday, January 7, 1919. At that time, only dancing remained under the ban, which was finally lifted on January 20....
During the first part of April 1919, deaths from influenza and pneumonia again averaged about two per week, into the first week of April.
On April 7, the Tribune recorded the death of Nellie Davis of Bladen—one week after her wedding. She was the last apparent flu death in the area. But the complications from the disease trailed on—three more boys with empyema, ages 4, 11, and 15, were admitted to Mary Lanning between March 23 and May 19. They survived, but bore the surgical scars of the disease for the rest of their lives. The rest of the survivors in Adams County, though their scars were of a different sort, did the same.
http://www.adamshistory.org/flu1918.htmlSo, it's not that surprising that by late April when the baseball season opened, they may have felt public meetings weren't a problem. They did have many restrictions when the flu pandemic was at its height.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
