We
reached out to local historian, author,
and retired educator Bill Donath. We
asked him if he had some information
that we could share about the Spanish
Flu and how it impacted Logan County.
As it turns out, Donath has spent the
last five years researching and writing
on that very topic. He put together a
261-page book about the Spanish Flu and
the lives it impacted locally. Donath
has completed his book and it had been
sent off to the printer just prior to
the outbreak of corona virus in the
United States.
And, irony on irony, the printing of
that book has been suspended because of
our current situation, the first world
pandemic since Spanish Flu. However,
Donath was kind enough to write up a
synopsis of the book and provide it to
us to assist in our quest.
That synopsis is being published as
presented by Donath.
About the Spanish Flu
The Spanish Flu began in 1918 and was
officially considered to be over in
1920. The flu was highly contagious and
deadly. According to information on the
CDC website, the flu infected
approximately 500 million people
worldwide – one third of the world
population. In the United States 50
million people were infected and there
was an estimated 675,000 deaths in our
country.
In Logan County, there were at least
3,100 confirmed cases and an estimated
436 deaths.
The Spanish Flu was an H1N1 type flu.
That may sound familiar to many today
because though we don’t say “Spanish
Flu” any longer, we do hear H1N1 every
year, and it is one strain that is
included in flu vaccines.
It is not known exactly where the
Spanish Flu originated, but it is known
that it came into the United States with
members of the military who had been in
Europe in 1918.
The Spanish Flu was reported to have the
worst impact on younger people, those in
their 20s and 30s, and even very young
children.
About Covid-19
There are two words associated with this
2020 pandemic – Covid-19 and coronavirus.
Some wonder which is the most correct,
and why both words are being thrown out
there so often.
Coronavirus (all one word according to
the CDC) is the name of a strain of
viruses that have been in existence for
a while. Covid-19 is the name of the
particular strain the world is dealing
with at the moment.
There are other coronavirus strains that
we are familiar with, such as SARS and
MERS.
The name Covid-19 contains the number 19
because technically the disease started
in 2019 in China. It did not become
widely known that the disease existed
until early 2020.
The source of the virus is being
attributed to animals, and more
specifically open air markets in China.
The disease can be carried by many
animals including camels, cattle, cats,
and bats. The CDC does not spell out
specifically how that connects to open
air markets, but it is known that the
disease was first spread from an open
air market with live animals and seafood
for sale, in Wuhan, Hubei Province,
China.
Covid-19 is currently reported to be
impacting people in their older years or
with ongoing health issues. Reports of
deaths from Covid-19 show that mortality
rates are highest among those who are
age 75 and above, but also has infected
and taken the life of much younger
people on a smaller scale.
Similarities in the two pandemics
The two pandemics do share some
similarities.
Both have proven to be deadly and highly
contagious.
Both have their deadliest impact on the
respiratory systems.
In the days of the Spanish Flu, one of
the largest controversies associated
with the disease was the necessity of
quarantine and its effectiveness in
battling the spread of the influenza.
Today, one of the biggest controversies
with Covid-19 is that of the shelter in
place. As time progresses, more and more
people are becoming impatient with the
situation and are choosing to protest
the orders to stay at home.
Both Spanish Flu and now Covid-19
negatively impacted the economy.
In 1918, local governments implemented
what was called non-pharmaceutical
interventions and that included the
closure of businesses as part of
controlling human interactions. While
that proved to be a devastating blow for
many businesses at the moment, the
government reported that after the virus
was annihilated, the economy bounced
back. The country enjoyed prosperity
until the Great Depression of 1929.
Today, many government officials from
the President of the United States right
down to the Lincoln City Treasurer are
predicting that we will see a similar
bounce back once this disease is under
control.
The differences between the two
pandemics
From a journalistic viewpoint, the
biggest difference in the two pandemics
is the transmission of information.
Donath writes in his synopsis that it
was difficult to determine the accuracy
of the Logan County death counts during
the Spanish Flu because there was a lack
of records. He gleaned most of his
information from newspaper accounts,
death records, and the Lincoln
City Health Department and
notes that information from outside the
city was harder to find. At that time
there was NO county
health department, and no central
location for collecting data.
We know that today the Logan County
Department of Public Health is playing a
big part in tracking with Covid-19
through our community. The dashboard
that they have available online is
updated each day and is accessible to
anyone. In addition, the LCDPH is
partnering with Abraham Lincoln Memorial
Hospital to put out to local press
offices a daily report of the Covid
tests being performed, their results and
the number of people infected and if any
are hospitalized. To date the reports
have registered great big goose eggs in
the category of local lives lost.
Today we watch our Governor and our
President on television as they offer up
daily reports. There was no television
in 1918. The television didn’t come to
be until 1927. However, there was radio,
so people could stay informed that way
as well as by newspaper.
However, the World War had come to an
end in 1918, and President Woodrow
Wilson was reported to be much more
interested in dealing with war’s ending
than the Spanish Flu. Though it was
later announced that the President
himself contracted the flu and survived
it, he refused to acknowledge it as a
serious problem in the United States.
In March 2020, an article published in
The News Republic - How
America’s Newspapers Covered Up a
Pandemic - The terrifying, censored
coverage of the 1918 Spanish flu by
Walter Shapiro summed up the
Presidential reaction to the disease.
“In October 1918
alone, 195,000 Americans died from the
virus. Yet President Woodrow Wilson,
obsessed with a war in Europe that would
end on November 11, made no public
references to the disease. And states
received no assistance from Washington,
not even from the Food and Drug
Administration.”
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In stark contrast, our
federal government and our state
government have both been highly visible
during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Regardless
of whether you support our Republican
President Donald Trump or our Democrat
Governor J.B. Pritzker, no one should be
able to deny that both of those leaders
have been highly engaged in the battle
against this disease and have offered
leadership to the best of their ability.
Looking at the last sentence of that
March 2020 article – states received no
assistance from Washington, D.C., not
even from the Food and Drug
Administration.
In stark contrast, the public has heard
daily of the financial assistance that
is going to the states. There is a
multitude of information being provided
by the CDC on how to protect ourselves,
and the federal government has deployed
FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers to
assist states with immediate medical
facility needs and other tools that will
be needed to defeat this illness.
While many of us may
be wondering how the government can
afford to do what it is doing, and when
and how the ‘pay back’ will come about,
there is no denying that the government
has thrown a lot of money at this
problem. With multiple programs to help
working families who are now sheltering
in place and small businesses that have
had to shutter their doors for the
health and safety of their community,
the government is trying to keep
everyone going through this tough time.
During the Spanish Flu there was no
medical recourse for fighting the
disease. There were no medications that
could be administered.
From the CDC website: “With
no vaccine to protect against influenza
infection and no antibiotics to treat
secondary bacterial infections that can
be associated with influenza infections,
control efforts worldwide were limited
to non-pharmaceutical interventions such
as isolation, quarantine, good personal
hygiene, use of disinfectants, and
limitations of public gatherings, which
were applied unevenly.”
Science and technology over the last 100
years has advanced substantially. While
there is not a vaccine for Covid-19 yet,
scientists are rushing to create one.
Research doctors are experimenting with
drugs that have been used to treat other
illnesses with similar symptoms to see
if they have an impact on those
infected. And, while the results are
mixed, they keep trying, keep searching,
and are hopeful that they will be able
to give us something useful in the near
future. There have been a few reported
cases of a drug that is commonly used
for Malaria that has had a positive
effect on some patients.
The President’s task
force, led by Vice-President Pence is
well aware that Covid-19 is not going to
go away forever, and on the short list
of work to accomplish is to develop a
vaccine that will protect our
populations in the future. That work is
ongoing, and we’ve been assured that the
work will not stop until the vaccine is
ready to be administered to everyone.
There was also a shortage of doctors in
1918 compared to the number of patients.
In his book, Donath notes that there was
a doctor – a doctor –
in many of our small town communities.
He also noted that the doctors were not
immune to the disease and two, Dr. Paine
of New Holland and Dr. Brock of Atlanta
died of the flu. In addition, he noted
that about half of the doctors in the
county were called to the army camps.
In the book, Donath quotes a paragraph
quoted by Phil Bertoni in 2018 and
written by Harry Van Hook:
"Hit hard in Mt.
Pulaski, too - Harry Van Hook writes in
his book, 'Three Miles From Salt Creek',
that his dad, Dr. Forrest Van Hook, was
absent from his house for days going
about the countryside treating the sick
and dying. Harry writes that his dad
told him he'd go into a farm house and
most or all of the family would be sick
in bed, with the dead children on the
kitchen floor."
Today, Logan County has access to a
number of doctors and specialists. While
we perhaps still don’t have all the
doctors we could use for the population
of the county, the resources are much
greater than they were in 1918.
We do see a shortage in nurses and CNA’s
not just in Logan County, but all around
the country. However those that we do
have are very well educated, with plenty
of experience and compassion for the
patients they care for.
But looking back at 1918, the shortage
of doctors, the lack of governmental
leadership, and the “uneven” application
of non-pharmaceutical interventions such
as quarantines and shelter in place
rules were factors that kept the disease
rolling along for two years. Those
factors were also all intertwined. With
not enough doctors, family members
attempted to take care of each other.
Donath’s book offers accounts of people
who traveled to be with a sick person in
the family, only to come home with the
influenza themselves.
With no assistance from the government,
businesses had a harder time keeping
their doors closed, and would have to
try to re-open, often times too soon.
Donath wrote that there were three
occasions in 1918 alone when quarantines
and shelter in place appeared to be
working, so people would get back to
their normal routines, only to have the
influenza come back.
This is part of the history of the
Spanish Flu that our federal and state
leaders are taking to heart. We can’t go
back to normal too soon. That is the
reasoning behind the three phases on the
return to normalcy.
We are being asked to recognize that we
can’t go back to the way we were on
March 1st. We have been told we can’t
jump back into society with both feet
and full steam ahead.
It’s a hard pill to swallow. Our local
small businesses need to get back to
work, but even this week our Governor
has said that while the original Stay at
Home order was scheduled to be lifted
the end of April, he is debating whether
or not that should happen.
It may be hard for Logan County to
understand, because we have proven to be
the exception not the rule in the number
of daily cases. But, perhaps we need to
consider that the reason we are the
exception and not the rule is because
our citizens have done a good job of
protecting ourselves and each other.
So, was the Spanish Flu worse than
Covid-19? Some say yes, some say that
Covid-19 is no worse than any other flu
and that our country and state leaders
are over reacting.
And, maybe there is some validity to
that theory. But, we should also stop
and ask ourselves a few other questions.
If Woodrow Wilson were the President
today, would we be doing this well?
If science and technology had not
advanced as it has in the last 100
years, would we be doing this well?
If we were not adhering to the Stay at
Home orders, would we be doing this
well?
If we did not have the advances in
medicine and research, would we be doing
this well?
If we were suffering from Covid-19 in
1918, would we be doing this well?
Probably no one can fully answer those
questions, but can we all be thankful
that we don’t have to find out?
We hope so.
In the meantime, stay in, stay healthy,
and we’ll look forward to seeing you
when this is finally all over.
[Nila Smith]
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