President Woodrow Wilson’s administration, like its European counterparts, refused to acknowledge the mounting health crisis lest it dampen the country’s wartime morale. Early proposals to quarantine troops were rejected, and massive patriotic gatherings went on as planned, despite evidence that the disease was highly transmissible. On September 28, 1918, some 200,000 people came together for a Liberty Loan rally in Philadelphia. Within three days, every hospital bed in the city was full.
