The Spanish Flu: A Mirror Through Time
By Mish Al-Roubaie, History graduate
In this month in 1918, the second deadliest pandemic in human history had its first recorded case. By 1920, this pandemic had caused an estimated 50-100 million deaths globally. Though its origin has never been truly confirmed, its first recorded case was in a military training facility in the United States. With droves of American soldiers travelling overseas to participate in World War I, the disease quickly spread and decimated Europe.
At the start of this pandemic, many nations purposefully underreported the disease to avoid lowering their population's morale during the ongoing war. However, as a neutral power, Spain did not have this censorship in place. This falsely led the public to believe that Spain was the epicentre of the pandemic and, thus, erroneously refer to this disease as the "Spanish flu".
An emergency influenza ward in Kansas 1918, where the disease likely originated. (Source: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/spanish-flu-1918-1920/)
The Spanish flu caused more fatalities than the war itself. As far as the history of pandemics is concerned, the deadliness of the Spanish flu is overshadowed only by the Black Death, which decimated medieval Europe several centuries earlier.
Despite its impact, the legacy of the Spanish flu is often underrepresented, in no small part due to being overshadowed by The Great War. More recently, however, historians and the general public have been interested in the notable similarities between the Spanish flu and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Both COVID-19 and the Spanish flu are highly contagious respiratory diseases that spread rapidly across the globe. More significantly, however, both pandemics highlight the important role governments play in monitoring deadly diseases and enforcing public health measures such as social distancing, mask-wearing and quarantine mandates.
Barbers in California in 1919, socially distanced, wearing masks and giving open-air haircuts.
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Mask-wearing conductorettes in New York City (1918). (Source: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/masks-spanish-flu-1918/)
Indeed, there are uncanny similarities between these photos and the state of the world in recent years. Across Europe and America, local government officials banned public gatherings and mandated the closure of local schools, shops and theatres. In the United States, instructions were printed on how to craft homemade masks to be worn when leaving the house.
The efficacy of the national response is debatable. No effective vaccines were ever developed for the Spanish flu, and many homemade masks were poorly constructed and often only worn outdoors, where the chances of spreading the disease were less likely anyway. As always, public discontent also played a role in complicating these measures. One notable example was the ‘Anti-Mask League of San Francisco’ formed in 1919 to protest the enforcement of mask-wearing in San Francisco, with many members disputing the scientific data and arguing that their civil liberties were being infringed upon.
In spite of all these factors, the pandemic did eventually run its course, being mostly over by 1920.
No credible historian can ignore medical advancements and the immense developments in public health policies since 1918. However, the similarities between the 1918 flu outbreak and the modern COVID-19 pandemic are still interesting to reflect upon, if only to cynically remind ourselves that confusing government responses and misguided opponents of public health policies are nothing new.