America's Forgotten Pandemic Quotes

“Some spent years undermining Pfeiffer’s theory, and others—among them many of the most brilliant scientists of the era—took off after other alleged villains, spending untold thousands of man-hours in the crucially important but thankless task of proving themselves wrong.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“It seems that the returns of pandemic flu, every 30 or 40 years, are arbitrary. The return in 1918 happened to come in the midst of a world war, with all its crowds and migrations, and perhaps that coincidence created Spanish influenza. Perhaps, but can we be sure that crowds and migrations have much to do with increasing the virulency of flu? There is the annoying fact that two of the last three pandemics, those of 1889–1890 and 1957, appear to have originated not among the most cosmopolitan of the world—the citizens of New York or Panama City—but among the relatively isolated and static populations of the interior of Asia.24”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“The pandemic of 1918–1919 was clearly one of influenza, except in two of its features. One, it killed more humans than any other disease in a period of similar duration in the history of the world. Two, it killed an unprecedentedly large proportion of the members of a group who, according to records before and since, should have survived it with no permanent injury. The year 1918 was an actuarial nightmare: the flu and pneumonia death rate of life insurance policy holders over 45 and 50, for whose deaths the insurance companies were at least partly prepared, did, of course, rise, but only slightly as compared to the rate of young adults, whose deaths in great numbers no insurance company anticipated.16”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“The pandemic of Spanish influenza is easier to measure if it is restricted to the years of 1918 and 1919 and its farewell performance of 1920 is excluded.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“But the 1920 edition of the Spanish influenza virus was an attenuated variant of the original strain, and the human population was more resistent than in 1918 and 1919.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“When did the pandemic end? That is more difficult to say, for while flu pandemics often begin abruptly, they normally disappear only after several renewals of virulency and then a long tailing off. The pandemic of Spanish influenza subsided and sank below the level of general and even scientific perception in the United States and almost everywhere else in the world in spring 1919.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“World War I killed upwards of fifteen millions, wreaked immeasurable physical, social, and psychic damage, and left most of the citizens of the belligerent powers with a deep conviction that war must in some way be prohibited.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“In its first Spanish influenza pamphlet, issued in September, the USPHS recommended that those nursing flu patients wear gauze masks.37 Soon laymen decided that what was a sensible caution in the sickroom would be just as sensible in every situation. Gauze masks became a common sight in the streets and department stores of communities in the eastern United States. People could and did honestly believe that a few layers of gauze would keep out flu bugs, just as screens kept the flies off the front porch. The influenza virus itself is, of course, so infinitely tiny that it can pass through any cloth, no matter how tightly woven, but a mask can catch some of the motes of dust and droplettes of water on which the virus may be riding. However, to be even slightly effective during a flu epidemic masks must be worn at all times when people are together, at home and at work and in between, must be of a proper and probably uncomfortable thickness, must be tied firmly, and must be washed and dried at least once daily. Enforcement of such conditions is impossible and so the communities where masking was compulsory during the Spanish influenza pandemic almost always had health records the same as those of adjacent communities without masking.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“The case and death rates of communities which had “strict” closing orders were no better and often worse than elsewhere. However, public health officials had to do something, and closing up theatres, schools, pool halls, and even churches was the style in fall 1918.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“The characteristic of the influenza virus that makes it so dangerous and gives rise to epidemic after epidemic is its extreme mutability. It perpetually is changing the nature of its outer surface, which antibodies, the body’s most important defense system, must zero in on to be effective.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“Spanish influenza had rounded the globe in four months following its appearance in the United States and fully earned a promotion from epidemic to pandemic. It had infected so many that, for all its mildness, it had doubtlessly killed tens of thousands already. In its next wave it would kill millions.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“Robert Graves, the poet and British Army officer, was in London, too, still shaky from the German metal he had received in his chest and thigh the year before. His mother-in-law contracted influenza, but deceived her physician in order to make the rounds of the latest London plays with her son, Tony, on leave from France. She died July 13: “her chief feeling was one of pleasure that Tony had got his leave prolonged on her account.” On the day she died, Grave’s friend and fellow poet, Sigfried Sassoon, who had been shot through the throat in 1917, was shot through the head while on patrol in No-Man’s-Land. He recovered. Tony was killed two months later.27 Yes, the war was much more engrossing than Spanish flu.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“No other influenza before or since has had such a propensity for pneumonic complications. And pneumonia kills.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“July the incidence of influenza in the AEF had reached its lowest point since early spring. Only 99 men died of flu and pneumonia that month, and the number was expected to be even lower”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“Perhaps the strength of American society in 1918 was only the brief by-product of the war spirit. In the next year or so race riots, bombings, and a hysterical red scare would give proof that Americans were not always filled with mutual love and respect, but for that moment in fall 1918, when everyone in the nation had a fever and aching muscles or personally knew someone who had, Americans did by and large act as if they were all, if not brothers and sisters, at least cousins.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“The dollar sign is exalted above the health sign,” said Hassler, referring to the influence of the merchants on the supervisors’ decision.73”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“Today such news would galvanize the Medical Corps, but in 1918 it attracted only a modicum of attention.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918