The studies reached another important conclusion: That relaxing intervention measures too early could cause an otherwise stabilized city to relapse. This would allow time for vaccine development (though a flu vaccine was not used until the 1940s) and lessened the strain on health care systems. The most effective efforts had simultaneously closed schools, churches, and theaters, and banned public gatherings. By comparing fatality rates, timing, and public health interventions, they found death rates were around 50 percent lower in cities that implemented preventative measures early on, versus those that did so late or not at all. That same year, two studies published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sought to understand how responses influenced the disease’s spread in different cities. census that experienced the 1918 pandemic, and charted the death rates of 43 U.S. In 2007, a study in the Journal of the American Medial Association analyzed health data from the U.S. New York City, which reacted earliest to the crisis with mandatory quarantines and staggered business hours, experienced the lowest death rate on the Eastern seaboard. Louis, San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Kansas City responded fastest and most effectively: Interventions there were credited with cutting transmission rates by 30 to 50 percent. After implementing a multitude of strict closures and controls on public gatherings, St. But eventually, the most drastic and sweeping measures paid off. In Arizona, police handed out $10 fines for those caught without the protective gear. Of course, getting citizens to comply with such orders is another story: In 1918, a San Francisco health officer shot three people when one refused to wear a mandatory face mask.
( This is how small groups can save lives during a pandemic.)
These measures include closing schools, shops, and restaurants placing restrictions on transportation mandating social distancing, and banning public gatherings. Now as then, public health interventions are the first line of defense against an epidemic in the absence of a vaccine. The rise of globalization, urbanization, and larger, more densely populated cities can facilitate a virus’ spread across a continent in a few hours-while the tools available to respond have remained nearly the same. The deaths due to the virus were estimated to be about 358 people per 100,000 in St Louis, compared to 748 per 100,000 in Philadelphia during the first six months-the deadliest period-of the pandemic.ĭramatic demographic shifts in the past century have made containing a pandemic increasingly hard. Louis was less than half of the rate in Philadelphia. By the end of the pandemic, between 50 and 100 million people were dead worldwide, including more than 500,000 Americans-but the death rate in St. Two days later, the city shut down most public gatherings and quarantined victims in their homes. Shortly after health measures were put in place in Philadelphia, a case popped up in St. case, at a Kansas military base in March 1918, the flu spread across the country.
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