Americans Must Learn the Lessons of the Spanish Flu

Makeshift hospital for Spanish Flu victims.
Source: National Archives

Few people were prepared for the worldwide scourge thrust upon us by the sudden advent of the novel corona virus SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes the deadly COVID-19 disease. Yet despite repeated use of adjectives like “unprecedented,” and “extraordinary,” the fact is just 100 years ago the world faced a similar plague, the so-called Spanish Flu, which swept over the globe for the same reason today’s corona virus has—thanks to government secrecy and incompetence, and the inability for some ordinary citizens to look after themselves or care a damn about their friends and neighbors.

Yet the same virus that devastated the world a century ago can also teach us the way we can—and must—fight the current pandemic.

In America’s head-long rush to war in early 1918, few paid much attention to the growing number of soldiers reporting in sick with high fevers, body aches, and chills. It was, after all, flu season, and wartime expediency would not allow common influenza to slow down military training. Within a year, however, that flu would kill would vastly surpass the number of soldiers and sailors who died in combat on all sides during all four years of World War I.

So-Called Spanish Flu Death Toll

From August 1914 to the signing of the armistice in November 1918, about 16 million military personnel and civilians were killed or died of diseases associated with combat. From the spring of 1918 to the spring of 1919, the Spanish Flu claimed the lives of at least 40 million people—far more, too, than were lost in the Black Plague. Some estimates of the number of persons who succumbed to the Spanish Flu reach as high as 100 million.

Just as health experts today are warning of subsequent waves of SARS-COVID-2, the Spanish Flu came in three waves, with infection rates rising and ebbing, then rising again. At its height in the fall of 1918, the Purple Death, as it was also known, could kill a person in mere hours. Unlike most influenza variants, this flu killed more than just the very young and the very old. It was also particularly harsh for victims 20 to 40 years old—the very population that was fighting at the front.

And like today, there was no cure, no vaccine, and little support that medicine could provide other than prayer.

Flu Epidemic: Where Did It Come From?

Even today, no one absolutely is sure where such a virulent avian H1N1 flu virus came from. Some researchers believe it may have started in China. Others theorize the virus had been around for years, with minor outbreaks occurring in France in 1916 and England in 1917.

What we do know is that in January and February 1918, flu swept through rural Haskell County, Kansas. Between late February and early March, three recruits from Haskell County reported for training at Fort Riley, Kansas. Many historians believe one or more of these recruits carried the virus. By the end of March, thousands of Fort Riley soldiers were ill. Soldiers transferring to other military camps carried the virus with them, and soon 24 of the nation’s 36 largest military installations were suffering large outbreaks of influenza.

Though highly contagious, at this point the flu was still relatively mild. Though the death rate from this was somewhat higher than the normal rate of 0.1%, it wasn’t high enough to cause alarm. Infected and uninfected soldiers were packed into cramp troop ships for the voyage to the French port of Brest. By the time the ships arrived, even more of the soldiers were infected. They, in turn, carried the virus into the trenches.

Once brought into the trenches, the virus quickly spread through the British, French, and German forces. In wartime, however, casualty rates, even for illness, are kept secret. Media censorship prevented journalists from reporting on the large numbers of soldiers coming down ill in both the training camps and trenches. The families of soldiers who died of the flu were simply notified that their love one “died on the field of honor. “Whether on the battlefront or the home front, few people knew there was a flu epidemic. And no one realized how quickly it would become a global pandemic—or how deadly it would be.

By spring, the flu reached Spain, probably brought across the border by returning Spanish laborers who had been working in France. Because Spain was neutral in the war, there was no press censorship, and the Spanish media reported freely on what the news service Agencia Fabra called a “strange form of disease of epidemic character. “When the citizens of the belligerent countries finally became aware of the epidemics in their own nations, the flu had a new name. “Under the name of Spanish influenza, an epidemic is sweeping the North American Continent,” reported the Canadian Medical Association Journal. “It is said to have made its appearance first in Spain, hence Spanish influenza.”

The Second Wave Arrives

The flu subsided during the summer months of 1918, so much so that British military authorities declared the end to the Spanish Flu on August 10. But that—just as we’re seeing today—was merely wishful thinking. The influenza virus was only in waiting; changing itself, mutating into a more efficient predator.

Today, scientists understand that viruses can become more virulent as they pass from one human to another, a process called “passage.” The 1960 Nobel recipient Dr. Macfarlane Burnet estimated the relatively mild virus seen in the first wave of Spanish Flu had gone through fifteen to twenty human passages, emerging in the fall of 1918 a much more lethal disease than before. It would be this mutation that would give the Spanish Flu the nickname Purple Death.

As American soldiers continued to arrive in France in late August, French military authorities saw another eruption of influenza among their troops. So many sick French and American soldiers were hospitalized that the hospital had to turn away new victims.

And then, victims were dying in large numbers—20 times higher than normal flu—and many only hours after first showing symptoms. It was not unusual for a victim to wake up feeling fine, then collapse a few hours later. By dinner they would be dead. In between, bloody fluid filled the lungs, preventing the exchange of CO2 for oxygen. Cyanosis turned the skin blue, then purple, and sometimes nearly black, as the victim literally drowned in their own bodily fluids.

The current belief regarding today’s SARS-COVID-2 virus is it damages the capillaries (small blood vessel) that line the lung and the alveoli sacs, preventing proper gas exchange. Similarly, some victims of COVID-19 die only a few hours after falling ill.

 The Flu Comes Full Circle

In September the virus came full circle, returning to the U.S. with a vengeance aboard troop ships and warships returning from France. Once again, wartime expediency help spread the disease. On September 25, 3,108 soldiers boarded a troop train at Camp Grant, Illinois. By the time they reached their destination at Camp Hancock, Georgia, a 950-mile trek, 2,000 of the soldiers had to be hospitalized with the flu. Dozens died.

On September 28 Philadelphia held a patriotic parade featuring thousands of soldiers, sailors, Boy Scouts, and civic group members. Within three days, every hospital room in the city was filled with flu victims. As many as a quarter of the victims died every day, only to be replaced with new victims.

Similar results were seen in every large city in the nation. Like today, public health officials ordered stores and theaters closed. Businesses shut down. Public coughing and hand shaking were prohibited. Outside their homes, people had to wear cloth masks over their faces. Field hospitals like those normally seen on battlefields began popping up across the country to take in the overflow of flu patients from brick and mortar hospitals.

Mandatory face masks helped prevent the spread
of Spanish Flu. Source: National Archives

Many today think social distancing orders are excessive, but the extreme means Gunnison, Colorado took to save its citizens demonstrated its effectiveness. The city literally sealed itself off from the rest of the world. Armed guards prevented any outsider from entering the city limits; the also prevented any resident from leave. Extreme, yes, but it worked Gunnison was probably the only town in the U.S. to avoid the Spanish Flu. 

Eventually, the country’s leaders realized the best way to stop the flu was to stop feeding it. The military draft imposed to build up America’s small peacetime army was halted, and by October almost all military training was halted. The pipeline of fresh troops headed for the trenches of France began to dry up. Fortunately, the war ended on November 11.

Historians estimate about 700,000 Americans died from the Spanish Flu—more than all the American skilled in combat in WWI, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War together.

A Pandemic of Global Devastation

But America was not alone in its suffering. This second wave of influenza spread throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia. In Spain, which gave the pandemic its name, Catholic Masses held to pray for deliverance only helped spread the virus faster. Twelve hundred flu victims died daily in Barcelona alone; eventually more than 260,000 Spaniards would perish. Churches and funeral homes could not keep up with the dead.

When the killing stopped on the battlefields, the dying from influenza and secondary infections continued. A week after the November 11 armistice, the number of flu-related deaths in England soared to 19,000; eventually some 200,000 would die in the United Kingdom. India lost 5 million to the flu. Between 30,000 and 50,000 Canadians died. Many more perished in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. Then, by the end of November, it was gone. The virus that arrived in the third wave in December was a mere shadow of its former self. The virus had undergone an antigenic shift, creating a less virulent mutation. The third wave swept over New York City and San Francisco, California. It lingered throughout much of 1919, causing outbreaks here and there, but never the devastation the second wave wrought.

Spanish Flu: Aftermath

Despite its devastation, the Spanish Flu was largely forgotten until recently. Even the deadly outbreaks of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus in 2003 and the Novel H1N1 “swine flu” virus in 2009 did little to prepare us for the novel corona virus that plagues us today. (I survived the 2009 virus. Ironically, I contracted it while attending, as a U.S. Navy analyst in military medical operations, a class on responding to pandemics held aboard the hospital ship Mercy.)

Many factors tribute to the world’s slow response to the current virus, but they weren’t new or unprecedented factors. First was China’s secrecy about the virulence of the disease. That was exasperated by the leadership of too many nations failing to recognize the health disaster looming before them—including Donald Trump’s ongoing inability to deal with reality or to care about anyone or anything except himself and his re-election.

But by understanding what worked and didn’t work to combat the 1918 flu, we can understand better what’s working—and not working— today. Today’s politically-motivated demonstrations against stay-at-home orders forcing an early reopening harkens back actions that help spur the virus in 1918. The success of Gunnison to avoid any flu victims at all demonstrates isolation works. In the end, public health should always trump politics.

The Myths that Drive America’s Love of Guns

Americans love their guns – love them so much there are actually more guns in this country than there are people. Love them so much that, when dozens of people – mostly children – were slaughtered at an elementary school in Newtown, CT,  the media became filled with politicians and gun nuts defending lax gun control laws by claiming guns are an American heritage, an inherent right – why, even a God-given right. (I must have missed the part in the Bible about the Arsenal of Eden.)

Americans love their guns, though, not because it’s a right or heritage. They love their guns because of a mythology that has grown around them, a mythology inspired by cheap novels and cheaper movies. Most of what Americans think they know of their history is pure myth, and no where else in American history is there more mythology than the history of guns in this country.

Myth #1: The Second Amendment was written to protect the right to own guns.

Fact: The original intention of the Second Amendment was not to protect gun ownership, but to prohibit a standing army. Many of our Founding Fathers felt a standing army would tempt future leaders to indulge in foreign adventurism. In this they were right. Just think about Iraq.

Originally, the first line of the Second Amendment was worded something like, “Congress will make no provision for a standing army, but will rely on the militia of the states for the country’s defense.” Because of this reliance on militias, it continued, “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

The amendment, as originally written, was strongly opposed by George Washington and his lieutenants. Washington was well aware of the failings of the militia. In 1754, when Washington was a colonial militia officer, undisciplined militiamen under his command killed a French envoy, setting off the French and Indian War. Nor did the performance of rebel militia during the Revolution change his mind.

Because of Washington’s opposition, the wording prohibiting a standing army was removed from the Second Amendment, leaving just the last enigmatic line: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

In the end, the Founders believed each state would maintain its own militia by requiring each male citizen to serve a certain number of years in the organized militia. It was essentially a military draft of sorts. Today, however, there is no mandatory military service in the United States. Less than one percent of Americans ever serve in the military, so a “well regulated Militia” cannot be the answer to America’s love for guns.

Myth #2: A ragtag Patriot militia beat the most powerful fighting force in the world, the British Army.

Fact: After the battles at Lexington-Concord and Bunker Hill, the militia played at best a minor role in the Revolution. It was a well-trained, professional Continental Army led by George Washington – and backed up by the French army and navy – that defeated the British.

Contrary to popular belief, Minutemen were not born of the American Revolution, but were part of colonial forces since the mid-1650s. They were not ordinary militia, but an elite force of well-trained military reservists capable of responding instantly to attacks from hostile Indians or Frenchmen. Some American rebel militia usurped the name “Minutemen” in the months leading up to the Revolution, but the real pre-Revolution Minutemen actually ended up on both sides of the war.

Most Americans are unaware there were both rebel and loyalist militia in the Revolution. According to Thomas B. Allen, author of “Tories: Fighting for the King in America’s First Civil War,” both sides had roughly equal numbers of militiamen at their disposal, though the Tory militiamen were better armed, uniformed and trained. One of the best-known Tory militia units was the British Legion, a vicious, rampaging force commanded by the British officer Banastre Tarleton and, ironically, portrayed in Mel Gibson’s movie “The Patriot” as a British army troop.

The Patriot militia, on the other hand, was much less effective. In a 1776 letter to the president of the Congress, Washington wrote: “To place any dependence upon militia is assuredly resting upon a broken staff. Men just dragged from the tender scenes of domestic life, unaccustomed to the din of arms, totally unacquainted with every kind of military skill ... makes them timid and ready to fly from their own shadows.”

And fly they did – frequently. At the Battle of Camden, the militia that made up half the Patriot force broke and ran at the first shot, causing a defeat for Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates. Such performance was so much the norm that in the Battle of Cowpens in South Carolina, Brig. Gen. Daniel Morgan used it to lure British forces, including Tarleton’s legion, into a trap.

Morgan placed his greenest militia at the front of his lines and, knowing they would break and run, pleaded with them to fire just two volleys before retreating. Tarleton’s forces chased the militia into the teeth of Morgan’s lines, composed of Continental soldiers, including the general’s famed Morgan’s Rifles, and more experience militia. Tarleton’s forces were annihilated.

In his article, “Militia or Regular Army,” published in the European Journal of American Studies, historian Tal Tovy points out that Washington’s early strategy of hit-and-run tactics was based entirely on his need to rely on militia with unreliable fighting abilities. It was only after he had time to develop a professionally-trained Continental Army that Washington began confronting the British head-on.

It was that Continental Army, with the backing of several thousand French troops, which brought about the surrender of the British Army at Yorktown, VA.

Myth #3: Our Founding Fathers believed an armed citizenry was needed to defend liberty against a tyrannical government.

Fact: As discussed earlier, Washington and his lieutenants convinced Congress that militias could not be relied on alone to defend the country against foreign invaders. Why then would they think the same unreliable force would be able to defend the Constitution against their own government, tyrannical or otherwise?

Furthermore, when the Whiskey Rebellion erupted in 1791 – just three years after the Constitution was ratified – it was harshly put down by an army composed of federalized state militia led by President George Washington. The harsh response to the rebellion was applauded by Americans and proved the new U.S. government would brook no unrest among the states.

Several more such rebellions were similarly suppressed. Most notable was John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry, also put down by well-trained federal forces (U.S. Marines) led by U.S. Army Col. Robert E. Lee.

Myth #4: Gun control is a modern liberal plot to take weapons away from honest citizen gun owners.

Reenactment of the Gunfight at OK Corral.
(c. James G. Howes, 2008)

Fact: Gun control laws date back to at least the 1820s, and they were widespread in the western frontier.  In fact, gun violence was far less tolerated in the Old West than most people think. After all, shootouts were not good for business.

Far fewer cowboys carried guns on the trail than you might expect. In fact, many cattle barons prohibited their cow hands from carrying personal weapons to avoid violence among their workers, and also to prevent an accidental gunshot that could stampede the cattle.

Still, it was conceivable that out on the range, a gun might be a necessity. But once in town those guns had to be turned into the local sheriff’s office. Even in towns without gun control laws, saloons normally wouldn’t serve you until you first turned over your gun to the bartender.

Gunfights, in fact, were relatively rare in the not so Wild West because of these strict gun control laws. The most famous shootout, the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone, AZ, ironically was fought over Tombstone’s gun control law. The Clanton gang refused to turn in their guns and the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday set out to force the issue.

Gun laws in old Tombstone, in fact, were stricter than they are in Arizona today where citizens are allowed to carry handguns nearly everywhere they go. It makes you wonder if the Clanton gang hadn’t actually won the OK Corral gunfight.

So where did all this Old West gun lore come from? Dime novels written in the late 1800s to entertain tenderfoots in the East were notorious for exaggerating the myth of the cowboy and his six shooter. Self-serving books written by or about legendary lawmen like Wyatt Earp and Pat Garrett added to the mythology. A fledgling Hollywood added to it by making idealized cowboy movies a mainstay of its early films.

But the worst perpetrator of these gun myths is the National Rifle Association. The NRA and the gun manufacturers it represents have pushed these myths down the throat of Americans for decades. They call weapons like the Colt .45 revolver and the Winchester repeating rifle the guns that won the West. And the massive amounts of money they give to politicians make many a lawmaker a true believer.

In fact, relatively few people in the Old West owned handguns. They were expensive and hard to shoot accurately. Repeating rifles were also too expensive for most folks. Rejected by the U.S. Army, repeating rifles largely ended up in the hands of hostile Native American warriors. The most widely used gun the in the Old West, in fact, was the unglamorous double-barrel shotgun.

But the NRA has succeeded in making too many Americans believe you can’t be a good American unless you’re heavily armed at all times. And that puts the lie to the last great gun myth.

That the good guys always win.

Why the South Cannot Rise Again

I have often argued that had the Confederacy successfully seceded from the Union, the American South today would be part of Mexico. The South was never in a strong position for war. It was an agricultural region with little capability for manufacturing war materiel. Had it been sprung from the Union, the French Army occupying neighboring Mexico would have marched into the South in such a way as to make Sherman’s March to the Sea look like an afternoon hike.

In the aftermath of President Barrack Obama's election, a bunch of Obama-hating post-election dead-enders passed around petitions in all 50 states calling for secession from the Union. Most of the action, of course, was in the Red states, those that vote most often for Republicans. And most of those Red states are in the Old South. Since Donald Trump took up domicile in the White House, his racist-bating rhetoric has only encouraged those same dead-enders.

I stand by my conjecture above. If secession succeeded today, the result would be the same as it would have a century and a half ago—the South would still end up part of Mexico.

But it won’t succeed. It won’t even get a start. Bigotry might still be alive in Dixie, but the sociological

conditions that allowed the secession of the South in 1860 simply don’t exist today.

A Rich Man’s Movement

The southern secession movement in the mid-1800s was largely a rich man’s movement. The South has always been more oligarchic than the North. Plantations owners wielded great political power. They used their wealth to finance “filibusters,” mercenaries armies sent to take over Latin American countries to turn them into future slave states. Abolition threatened their cheap source of labor and that, in turn, threatened their profit margins.

The average southern man, however, was simply poor and ill-educated. He had little knowledge of the Union, or anything beyond a few square miles of the state in which he lived. Typically, he had no concern about slavery one way or another. To him, his state was his country. The idea of blue coats marching into his state was simply an act of aggression against his country. As a result, southern men were easily fooled into becoming cannon fodder for slave owners looking to save their profits.

To begin with, African Americans are no longer an enslaved people in the South. Minorities of all races are becoming the majority in the United States. Unlike the 1800s, they have a voice—a strong voice. And they vote.

The populace of the South today is also much better educated and much more aware of the rest of the country, if not the world. Far more of them were raised in other states, or studied in other states. They have a world view that just didn’t exist in the 19th century.

Moreover, those better educated Southerners are well aware that their very livelihoods depend on spending from Washington, D.C.

Dependent on Washington

Federal spending on such programs as defense, aerospace, agriculture, energy, Social Security, and Medicare is heaviest in the Red states. As much as some of their citizens might think of themselves as independent and self-reliant, they are actually the biggest “takers,” receiving far more federal funds per person than they send to Washington in taxes.

According to research conducted by the business website 24/7 Wall St., Red states make up eight of the top 10 states receiving the most federal dollars: North Dakota, West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, New Mexico, Maryland, Virginia, and Alaska. Connecticut and Hawaii were the only Blue states in the top 10. Research by the Washington Post found similar results.

The fact is this Union is held together by an economic spider web of federal spending. Any attempt by a state to break away would result in an immediate economic collapse in that state. Large corporations with federal contracts – whose only loyalty lies with the source of their profits – would quickly pull up roots and relocate to a loyal state to keep those contracts. Subcontractors working for those corporations would do likewise or wither. Housing markets in secession states would collapse as workers moved to Union states to keep their jobs, and construction jobs would soon disappear.

Breakaway states where the economy relies on imported and exported products would be unable to do either. The federal government not only controls all the air corridors crisscrossing the nation, but also all the intrastate waterways. Without the FAA to regulate air traffic, or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to maintain ports or rivers like the Mississippi and the Missouri, commerce would come to a standstill.

Defenseless

Seceding states would be left defenseless from outside aggression. In 1860, state militias were funded entirely by the states. When the Civil War started, they were able to raise an army from state-funded militia. But it didn't last. The Confederate states were unable – perhaps unwilling – to raise enough tax revenue to fund the rebel army. By the end of the war, the Confederate Army was short of everything needed by its troops—clothing, shoes, food, ammunition. Johnny Reb fought much of the war barefoot and starving.

Had the South successfully seceded, its army would have been no match for the French army in Mexico. Napoleon III was keen on recapturing land the first Napoleon reluctantly sold to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Throughout the Civil War, French troops stood ready to invade the American south had the opportunity arose.

Today, Washington, DC pays 95 percent of the costs to maintain each state’s National Guard, the modern day organized state militia. Since Red states today are as reluctant to raise taxes as their Civil War predecessors, it would be impossible for them to maintain their state militias. Any border state that secedes from the Union would see its state militia fall apart, leaving the state vulnerable to invasion from more powerful countries such as Mexico, Canada or, in the case of Alaska, Russia.

When our Founding Fathers created this country in the 18th century, they originally founded a confederation of states. The loose bounds of that confederacy made governance nearly impossible, so our Founders created the Union.

In 1860, the seceding states also created a confederation. It worked no better than the original confederation. Despite early rebel battle victories, the Confederacy could not support its army or maintain itself as a country.

There is no reason to believe a third try would be the charm.