Some people clearly want draconian forms of social distancing to go on and on and on. Some of them probably say this from fear. Some of them probably say it because of a desire to control people. Some of them are merely following those epidemiologists who advocate it.
And some are quoting misinformation such as this, which I’ve seen floating around lately here and there. It’s rather typical of the sort of thing one often sees on social media:
People grew sick of the social distancing measures as they dragged on into the summer of 1918. When the Great War finally ended in late November, people took to the streets to celebrate their good fortune. In the coming weeks, the second wave of the pandemic killed more people than the war. It’s not a game…
Let’s take this point by point.
The Great War didn’t end in late November; it ended on November 11, 1918. But when did the parades occur? Well, in a quick search, I found this large one in NYC in September of 1919, a date much too late for the above quote. The troops hadn’t come back the moment the war ended:
Demobilization began in late 1918; by September 1919 the last combat divisions had left France, though an occupation force of 16,000 U.S. soldiers remained until 1923…
It’s hard to get a sense of when most of the parades were held. This article mentions some in St. Louis that occurred almost immediately after the armistice, but the larger ones (you have to scroll down to see the articles) seem to have occurred in 1919.
The case of Philadelphia has come up before in various articles, but its parade that is linked to a huge increase in flu occurred before the war’s end:
Two days after the parade, the city’s public health director Wilmer Krusen, issued a grim pronouncement: “The epidemic is now present in the civilian population and is assuming the type found in naval stations and cantonments [army camps].”
Within 72 hours of the parade, every bed in Philadelphia’s 31 hospitals was filled.
And yet the situation was nowhere near as simple as that:
If St. Louis had waited another week or two, they might have fared the same as Philadelphia, says the lead author on the first study, Richard Hatchett, M.D., an associate director for emergency preparedness at NIAID. Despite the fact that these cities had dramatically different outcomes early on, all the cities in the survey ultimately experienced significant epidemics because, in the absence of an effective vaccine, the virus continued to spread or recurred as cities relaxed their restrictions.
The second study also shows that the timing of when control measures were lifted played a major part. Cities that relaxed their restrictions after the peak of the pandemic passed often saw the re-emergence of infection and had to reintroduce restrictions, says Neil Ferguson, D.Phil., of Imperial College, London, the senior author on the second study. In their paper, Dr. Ferguson and his coauthor used mathematical models to reproduce the pattern of the 1918 pandemic in different cities. This allowed them to predict what would have happened if cities had changed the timing of interventions. In San Francisco, which they found to have the most effective measures, they estimate that deaths would have been 25 percent higher had city officials not implemented their interventions when they did. But had San Francisco left its controls in place continuously from September 1918 through May 1919, the analysis suggests, the city might have reduced deaths by more than 90 percent.
Perfect timing is impossible; we simply don’t know enough. And diseases often come roaring back no matter what we do. In addition, if extreme social isolation measures continue, a city dies in other ways.
With COVID-19, there are scientists who are saying that extreme social distancing doesn’t matter all that much because the disease follows a certain course with or without it. Make of the following what you will:
A prominent Israeli mathematician, analyst and former general claims simple statistical analysis demonstrates that the spread of COVID-19 peaks after about 40 days and declines to almost zero after 70 days — no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it.
Prof Isaac Ben-Israel, head of the Security Studies program in Tel Aviv University and the chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, told Israel’s Channel 12 (Hebrew) Monday night that research he conducted with a fellow professor, analyzing the growth and decline of new cases in countries around the world, showed repeatedly that “there’s a set pattern” and “the numbers speak for themselves.”
While he said he supports social distancing, the widespread shuttering of economies worldwide constitutes a demonstrable error in light of those statistics.
To get back to the original quote that began my post – “In the coming weeks [following WWI victory celebrations], the second wave of the pandemic killed more people than the war…”. But that’s a misleading connection, too.
The second wave was very deadly around the world, including countries that were not really major participants in WWI, and it peaked before the war’s end for the most part [emphasis mine]:
The second wave of the 1918 pandemic was much more deadly than the first. The first wave had resembled typical flu epidemics; those most at risk were the sick and elderly, while younger, healthier people recovered easily. By August, when the second wave began in France, Sierra Leone, and the United States, the virus had mutated to a much more deadly form. October 1918 was the month with the highest fatality rate of the whole pandemic.
Lest you think (as I did) that Sierra Leone had nothing to do with WWI, there actually was some action involving military there, but it occurred solely in West Africa and was not part of the European theater of war. At any rate, as you can see from the above quote, the second wave was well underway in the US and elsewhere prior to the end of WWI and was especially deadly in the month before the war’s end.
I am heartily sick of the sharing of information that is based on nothing but someone’s statement, and designed to lead to a certain result. In this case, that result is the continued clamping down on the US public, and the damping down of objections to it.
Personally, I’m all for the continuation of a certain amount – a milder amount – of social distancing. And in particular, since I’m in a high risk group because of age and a pre-existing condition, I plan to be fairly strict with myself. But that has nothing to do with what should happen in the larger society. I wouldn’t advocate a bunch of parades, of course. But I believe businesses need to reopen and people need to get back to something approximating regular commerce and regular life, and it needs to happen pretty soon in most places.
It is possible that there are huge costs in terms of illness, but it is virtually certain there are huge costs as well in keeping things closed. Those latter costs are not just economic, either. They can and probably will impact on physical and mental health as well, with people shut in and worried about their livelihoods, taking it out on each other in many instances, drinking, not exercising, overeating, becoming depressed, and not tending to other medical needs.
