We cannot rush to create a new normal - learn from pandemic history!

Our best public health strategy to prevent community spread of the coronavirus is to be diligent about social distancing, practice relentless hand washing and to continue to shelter in place, for as long as it takes to see the pandemic begin to subside.

An echo opinion published in Minneapolis, Minnesota newspaper the Star Tribune, by Scott Gillespie, the editorial editor and vice president:

Members of the Red Cross were on duty to receive people affected by the flu in St. Louis in October 1918.

Commentary writer Christopher O. Moore, a retired teacher from Belle Plaine, Minn., provides a history lesson this morning.

Moore's grandfather died at age 31 during the 1918 influenza pandemic. He points out that Donald Trump, who often expresses his dismay that people die from the flu, also lost a grandfather during the 1918 pandemic.

Moore has some questions for the president. "Has Trump ever considered remembering the past and learning lessons from 1918 and the pandemic one science journalist called “the biggest disaster of the twentieth century”?

"Does he know that at first some public officials dismissed the 'Spanish' flu as seasonal, one that typically dies out in warm weather, nothing to be taken seriously? Or that it spread widely in the summer heat, then intensified in autumn, ultimately striking in three different waves?"

Moore's commentary is especially timely given that states such as Georgia are loosening restrictions on business activity in ways that conflict with guidelines the Trump administration has announced — and in ways that conflict with the lessons learned from 1918.

Let us learn from those who died in 1918, wrote Moore:
Donald Trump's grandfather, like mine, died in the flu pandemic of 1918. He was only 31 years old. He was one of millions who perished during the global flu pandemic of 1918.

Their memories can lead us in today's crisis.

Donald Trump wondered last month, “Does anybody die from the flu? I didn’t know people died from the flu.”

But his own grandfather did, like mine — in 1918.

Whether the president never knew or just forgot is unclear; unfortunately he seems to not know a lot. For example, that the 1918 flu infected perhaps 500 million people, one third of the world’s population at the time, and that somewhere between 50 million and 100 million died worldwide, more than in the two world wars combined.

Has Trump ever considered remembering the past and learning lessons from 1918 and the pandemic one science journalist called “the biggest disaster of the twentieth century”?

Does he know that at first some public officials dismissed the “Spanish” flu as seasonal, one that typically dies out in warm weather, nothing to be taken seriously? Or that it spread widely in the summer heat, then intensified in autumn, ultimately striking in three different waves?

He might be surprised to learn that some local governments downplayed the public risk. Philadelphia held a parade celebrating Liberty Bonds even as 600-plus soldiers and sailors stationed nearby lay seriously ill. Philadelphia’s public health director assured citizens that it was just the normal flu and would be contained before infecting the civilian population.

So on Sept. 28, thousands of soldiers, Boy Scouts, marching bands and local dignitaries paraded through downtown Philadelphia, as 200,000 spectators lined the streets. Days later, hospitals in the area filled with patients suffering and dying. Soon as many as 500 corpses awaited burial, some for more than a week. Cold-storage plants became temporary morgues.

Does the Donald Trump care to remember that?

He might find it worthwhile to learn that St. Louis suffered flu-related deaths less than half the per capita rate of Philadelphia. How so? They banned large gatherings, staggered work shifts, limited streetcar ridership and encouraged wearing masks. Then, when some of the public pushed back against this “decision that infringes on people’s rights,” the mayor and city health officials held their ground.

Remember: Half the rate of death of Philadelphia.

Remembering the past might inform the president that history often repeats itself — or at least rhymes, as they say. In 1918, health care workers became endangered eyewitnesses to the contagion as one after another of their patients passed, unable to breathe, delirious, turning blue, suffocating to death.

One doctor described “bodies stacked like cords of wood in the hospitals.”

Another witness: “The memory of this sight will haunt for life the minds of those who saw it.”

Today our minds are haunted by fears of shortages, diminished incomes, even lost jobs. Serious concerns, no denying. But watching from the wrong side of a window as a family member slowly suffocates?

An estimated 195,000 Americans died of influenza during one month, October 1918. Two who passed away days apart were Frederick Trump and Charles O. Moore — the president’s grandfather and mine. Like many others who have lost loved ones to influenza, we are touched by their deaths even today.

One of them left his son a real estate business and fortune that found its way to the presidency. The other left his wife with three young children who soon found their way to a home for orphans. The president boasts of his wealth; my father claimed he was proud to be a “home kid.”

I wonder who is yet to prosper, or suffer, or perish, especially if we fail to acknowledge the past before the virus touches us all.

Christopher O. Moore, of Belle Plaine, Minn., is a retired teacher.
That’s another matter. Lost profits and limited liberty? Or unlimited suffering and lost lives?

We’re faced with lots of tough choices. We’re told information from coronavirus testing and tracing is crucial, so making the right choice may be all in the timing. But as we rush to liberate ourselves from temporary isolation, let’s not forget: It’s a choice that will alter lives forever.

Scientists caught by surprise - pandemic literature review

https://cen.acs.org/static/about/staff_landing/biobh.html
A Chemical Engineering science writer reviewed the history of the 1918 Influenza pandemic and then summarized with a bold prophetic quote.  A retrospective look at this essay is evidence about how historians can often trump the scientists.

Bethany Halford: "as Newscripts editor, loves a quirky science story."

1918 The Great Influenza - Boston nurses published in The Atlantic

INFECTIOUS DISEASE:
Learning from the infamous 1918 Spanish flu

A century later, experts reflect on whether it could happen again?

Bethany Halford Chemical and Engineering News Boston

C&EN, 2018, 96 (11), pp 46–46March 12, 2018

This (i.e., 1918) year marks the hundredth anniversary of the worst influenza outbreak in modern history. The 1918, flu pandemic infected 500 million people—one-third of the population at that time—from remote Pacific islands to the Arctic. The virus killed anywhere from 50 million to 100 million people.

Although it’s commonly called the Spanish flu, most historians agree that the 1918 pandemic started in Kansas in the spring of that year. The first victim on record was Albert Gitchell, a cook at Camp Funston, part of the Fort Riley military base, says Kenneth C. Davis, historian and author of the forthcoming book “More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War” on the pandemic.

The virus spread quickly through the military base and then across the country as soldiers were deployed to other military installations. Soldiers brought the disease to Europe, where it spread rapidly in barracks, trenches, and crowded cities.

“We can’t say the flu changed the outcome of the war, but it certainly had an impact on the progress of the war,” Davis says. At one point, Britain’s Royal Navy could not sail because so many sailors were ill. And in June, which is late in a typical flu season, the German army couldn’t mount an important offensive campaign because half a million German soldiers were sick with the flu.

News of the flu was largely kept quiet that spring. Warring nations censored or buried newspaper accounts of the outbreak’s severity. “Governments were trying to keep this quiet to keep morale up and not to let the enemy know they were weakened by the flu,” Davis explains. Spain was neutral in the conflict, so when uncensored press reports of the outbreak in Madrid reached the English-speaking world, the virus became known as the Spanish flu.

Once the summer peaked, the flu seemed to disappear. But it reemerged in late August, striking with a speed and virulence that had never been seen before. “When you read the accounts, one after another, you find the same phrase used over and over: Bodies were stacked like cordwood,” Davis says.

The elderly and the young are typically hit hardest during flu outbreaks. But in 1918 and 1919, most of the flu’s victims were healthy, young adults. This, scientists think, could be because their immune systems’ responses to the infection were so forceful that they ended up being fatal—a phenomenon experts refer to as a cytokine storm.

With an outbreak that claimed so many young lives—and more people than the entirety of World War I—everyone worries: Could the world see another outbreak as severe as the 1918 pandemic?

Looking back through historical records, it’s clear that influenza outbreaks date as far back as the 1500s. Many flu researchers say the possibility of another one lends a sense of urgency to their work.

Seema Lakdawala, an expert on flu transmission at the University of Pittsburgh, says she’s not convinced we’ll ever see an outbreak as bad as the one 100 years ago. “I think we have better countermeasures now,” she says. “Our ability to contain and respond during a pandemic is so much better than it was in 1918.”


She points to the 2009, swine flu pandemic as an example. “We had an emergence of a pandemic virus that was completely novel, highly transmissible, and lethal—maybe not as lethal as the 1918 virus—and we were able to produce a vaccine,” Lakdawala says. Doctors now have a wide range of antivirals to use as well as antibiotics to fight pneumonia that often infects and subsequently kills people who have the flu. “I think that if another pandemic were to emerge, we have that same arsenal in hand,” she says.

And researchers are working to develop better antivirals and more sophisticated vaccines. Whether or not we will ever have to call on that arsenal remains to be seen, but experts agree that it’s important to learn from what happened in 1918.