This is Democracy – Episode 158: Pandemic Persistence

This is democracy, a podcast about the people of the United States, a podcast
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[00:00:24]Jeremi: [00:00:24] welcome to our new episode of this is democracy.
[00:00:28] Today. We have the great opportunity to talk about a topic that’s, uh, pervading our news and pervading, many of our fears and a topic with a long and rich history, but a history that very few people know about, uh, the history, not just a pandemics, but the history of, uh, what we might call pandemic, persistence, how pandemics that begin, um, and cause great harm.
[00:00:52] Linger long after people think that they are through the danger they go. And what many call waves, second and third waves. And there’s a human tendency to want to get through the crisis and reach the other side to be done with it. And today we’re dealing with the challenges of recognizing that we’re not.
[00:01:12] With the pandemic we’ve confronted, and this is an old dilemma, an old challenge, uh, and we’re so fortunate to have with us, a good friend, a wonderful scholar, uh, a mench, uh, Chris McKnight, Nichols, uh, Chris, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:27] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:01:27] Thanks for having.
[00:01:29] Jeremi: [00:01:29] Chris is a, is a very distinguished scholar. He’s the director of the center for the humanities, uh, at Oregon state university.
[00:01:37] He’s also the Sandy and Elvis Sanders eminent professor in the honors college there. Uh, he is an Andrew Carnegie fellow, which is really a, quite a distinction, uh, and he’s best known for. That I know all of my students have been forced to read. Hopefully if enjoyed reading it. I promise in parallel America at the Dawn of a global age, which is really about the late 19th, early 20th century, and the debates between various forms of isolationism and internationalism.
[00:02:06] And Chris gets us beyond the. False dichotomies we often have about these terms. He’s the author and editor of five other books of the most recently published. One is a fantastic book, rethinking American grand strategy. What does it mean to be a strategically focused society? What does it mean to have a strategic dialogue?
[00:02:25] In the world we’re in today, how can history help? And he has a new book coming out on ideologies or ideas and us foreign relations, uh, and the title is ideologies and us foreign relations, new histories. I’m lucky to have a chapter in this book. It’s a really wonderful collection that Chris has put together of different ways of understanding how ideas influence American policy.
[00:02:46] Most recently, Chris has spent, I think, much of the last. A year or so doing a lot of research on this period, he knows so well, the early 20th century, the period in particular, uh, around the influenza pandemic of 19 18, 19, 19, and what we can learn for today. So, uh, Chris, we’re really excited to hear your insights about all of these issues.
[00:03:08] Before we turn to Christo, we have of course our, uh, opening poem for Mr. Zachary Siri. What’s the title of your poem today? Zachary, this peaceful Dawn, this peaceful. I love it. We have Chris’s book global Dawn and we have your poem, peaceful dog. Let’s let’s hear your Dawn. This
[00:03:25] Zachary: [00:03:25] peaceful Dawn. They say the earth rotates upon an axis, a spinning world, a gentle hum.
[00:03:33] They say the earth is never still. I say it’s like a pendulum. Look, it swings upon a string at the ends. It stops a beat, all gone of pain and death and fear. But back it folds into the curve and ends the cursory retreats. Park over yonder where the duke of York assembles dying men upon the hill. When they’re up there flying when they’re down deaths, how it’s feel.
[00:04:00] And when they’re only halfway up they’re flightless yet not going. But times like these are feeding quite short, this peaceful Dawn,
[00:04:09] Jeremi: [00:04:09] Zachary, I have to say among other things, I am impressed with how you work with the duke of York to your, to your poem when you’re up, you’re up. But when you’re down, you’re dead.
[00:04:18] What is your poem about?
[00:04:20] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:04:20] It was really about, uh,
[00:04:21] Zachary: [00:04:21] the, uh, very strange, uh, emotional nature. Of this pandemic and the ways in which it’s become like a pendulum where we feel like we finally reached a moment of peace and it’s so fleeting. And we go right back down into that swing of, of destruction and death and pain, right.
[00:04:39] Jeremi: [00:04:39] We swing in, in two directions. Right. Chris, is that a, is that a helpful way to think about, uh, how societies in the past, how Americans and others have grappled with the persistence of a.
[00:04:51] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:04:51] I think it is, you know, the, uh, in particular, the line in times like this are fleeting, um, it does seem, um, that time sort of speeds up and slows down simultaneously in a pandemic.
[00:05:03] And certainly, you know, the experience of the 1918 pandemic. If you look at sort of social histories, Diaries letters, letters to the editor, that sort of, uh, kind of evidence you see people first, uh, largely putting it off thinking of the flu pandemic, the first one, which we’ll be getting into, I think a bit more as, uh, just a three-day fever, a new name for an old disease.
[00:05:25] And then, and then suddenly when it comes back and it’s more virulent, you know, people get very upset, very scared. There’s a, there are problems with information and time sort of, um, slowed down then as people quarantined. You know, other kinds of non-pharmaceutical interventions and social distancing and all that sort of stuff.
[00:05:44] Uh, and then, uh, then again, sort of this sense you would say afterwards to speeding up our story, uh, of a, of a kind of amnesia about what had just happened now, it wasn’t like the trauma wasn’t there. It was very much. Uh, folks in the 1920s and we can see it in the historical record, much more clearly than people have, um, sometimes suggested, uh, but those, it had, it had passed by.
[00:06:05] And so the pendulum swung several times through, and then there was this sort of, um, compulsion across many societies to move on. Uh, even though they’d been so devastated. So I think the poem actually encapsulates a lot of the lived experience of going through a. That that’s
[00:06:22] Jeremi: [00:06:22] so helpful, Chris, and maybe starting at the beginning, the first wave in 1918 a lot has been recently, you written about this, uh, after ignoring it for a long time, we all came back to it.
[00:06:35] Uh, as, as this historical moment, one of the unique things I know you focused on are the varied reactions to it. How, how can we think about and understand that the ways in which people reacted at that time to the part of this pandemic, we’ve already been through that first.
[00:06:51] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:06:51] Yeah. So, you know, um, the first part of the story that, that historians then, and really anyone thinking about how to map on the past of the president needs to understand is that the world war one context was dominant for, for what was going on then.
[00:07:03] So if you think about how governments responded or citizens responded, or the ways in which, um, rhetoric, uh, could be made persuasive to urge people to take public health measures, um, all of that, uh, occurred in the middle. You have of a, of a world war of a particularly devastating one. If you’re in Europe, uh, and one that the us entered into quite late.
[00:07:24] So U S doesn’t come to the war in April until April, 1917. Uh, the first way of, of the pandemic, um, is really February, March is when it begins. Uh, now there’s some different kinds of, uh, debates over where it comes from, but we can trace very clearly influenza coming out of Kansas, uh, traveling along. Uh, true, uh, lines, uh, through, uh, railroad and through shipping, uh, across the Atlantic, uh, to Europe, uh, in, uh, April and may, uh, 1918.
[00:07:55] Um, and then you can see it go around the world, in fact, uh, so that, uh, you have, uh, influenza reaching Shanghai towards the end of may. Uh, and you saw it, um, in Sydney and elsewhere, um, by June. And so it had kind of gone around the world, but what was different in that moment? Um, which, um, isn’t quite like ours.
[00:08:13] Parallels are imperfect, uh, was that the case fatality rates were much lower. It was much more mild, uh, that viral, uh, pandemic in that moment. And so the governments that were responding to this, particularly the governments that were at war, they had significant incentives to, to, to underplay what was going on.
[00:08:32] And because deaths weren’t so bad, uh, The, that didn’t seem as a responsible as it now, now might. Um, so, you know, uh, a couple of the key data points here probably, uh, listeners are aware of this, but you know, becomes known as the Spanish flu in part because the sensor press, uh, in the U S and, and, um, Britain in France, in Germany, in Russia, at the censored press and the war, uh, Uh, information about the flu away from folks, but when the Spanish king comes down with the flu and spans a neutral in the war, when they’re reporting on it, um, it becomes known as the Spanish flu in that moment and weaponized as a kind of racist, political, uh, language, because the Anglo American press sees this on the Spanish is having, you can find this, you can Google this, some of these stories, you know, having bad hygiene in bed climate, and that those were the contributing factors to why Spain had ramped it outbreaks.
[00:09:25] Um, so that’s. Of the ways in which you, you see a kind of response. Sort of nationalist, politicized, wartime rhetoric. Um, and then, you know, uh, just as a data point about the deaths in that moment, um, the British Navy had about 10,000, uh, sailors, uh, go to go be hospitalized, uh, due to the flu, but only about four were accorded to die in that period.
[00:09:48] Um, that’s the first way of second way far more deadly. You’re seeing something like 5% of troops who. Di you see basis overwhelmed, uh, you know, in, in the U S so we’ve been talking more about the second wave and kind of what that may be suggest for the moment, but, um, you know, the month of October alone, 200,000 Americans die and a population about a third, the size of our current one, uh, just absolutely devastating.
[00:10:12] Well,
[00:10:13] Jeremi: [00:10:13] and Chris, when we talk about the first wave in the second way, what do we really mean? And if we’re in a second wave now, how do we, how can that past experience help us understand where we are?
[00:10:24] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:10:24] Yeah. You know, it’s a, it’s an interesting, it’s a good point for us to consider, you know, um, so w what is a way of epidemiologists, public health scholars and others, you know, disagree a little bit on this language and whether or not a wave is the best way to think about it.
[00:10:36] But generally speaking, if you’re thinking that the pandemics of the past, um, the waves represent moments of mutations, Usually, uh, and as viruses mutate, they don’t necessarily have any direction. There’s no teleology to viruses, right? They don’t necessarily want to become more, uh, uh, you know, deadly, uh, or, or anything along those lines, they just mutate.
[00:10:56] So the, the waves, um, are, are part of that, uh, part of this, you know, kind of naturally occurring mutations in the virus and then how they spread through different infected populations. So the first way of in 1918 is this somewhat more mild influence. It goes around the world within just a short number of months.
[00:11:14] That’s the spring of 1918. Then we know again, because of the war time context and really good data analysis, um, where and how the second way of moves. And it comes, you see it in, uh, uh, documents, uh, particularly, um, us intelligence documents you can find, uh, warnings of this is really bad, uh, blaring, you know, red alert kinds of warnings to the U S military.
[00:11:37] Uh, British, um, saying that this is going to affect the war effort, uh, in August, uh, 1918. And then that virulent more virulent. Second wave comes back across the Atlantic. You can watch it travel on troop. Transports comes to Boston, um, and camp Devons outside Boston is absolutely devastated. And then you can watch it through the, uh, military records travel along the east coast that goes in by ship to Philadelphia.
[00:12:01] They have this famous outbreak, terrible outbreak where their public health officials, uh, allow a big parade, the biggest parade to date in Philadelphia to go on a Liberty loan drive wartime parade that becomes a real super spreader event. Um, and it’s not now just infections it’s deaths and you have deaths mounting the horse-drawn character.
[00:12:20] Um, uh, uh, that, uh, priests were, were traveling through, uh, simply couldn’t keep up with the amount of bodies. Um, something like 12,000 Philadelphians died just in about six weeks alone, just really devastates the city. And that’s the kind of thing we were trying to prevent, uh, in April, may, June of 2020, when people who knew about this past public health said, you know, this is what flattening the curve is.
[00:12:44] Don’t interact with people. Don’t have big events, don’t have football games, don’t have parades because look what happened in Philadelphia in September, 1918, this, these sorts of super spreader events are something we can prevent. For sure. It doesn’t take any modern medical knowledge. And we have know historical precedents that suggest how bad this is.
[00:13:01] And you can think about this again, even in the present with our numbers of unvaccinated folks. Is it a good idea to have 60,000 people at a football stadium? Um, you know, should they be vaccinated? These are important kinds of questions for public. Um, because if for no other reason, well, there are a number of reasons, but one reason would be overwhelming.
[00:13:20] The public health infrastructure affects all of us equally, right? If you have a heart attack, if your child needs surgery, uh, you know, they’re still, uh, left out of the public health infrastructure. Um, if the hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID cases and you saw something like that with a much lower level of public health infrastructure in 1918, where hospitals were overwhelmed and.
[00:13:40] Really important data point then is that nurses and doctors have been drafted into, into the military. And so there was an enormous shortage of public health staff, which exacerbated that crisis. Um, and then just, just recapping the, the whole, the way. The third wave is generally thought of as occurring, um, in winter and spring 1919.
[00:14:00] Now this is a contingent around the world. I’ve been focusing on the U S but it depends where you look. Um, so that, that way of in, in the rest of the world sometimes spread all the way into the summer or even into the fall of 19, 19, and then generally speaking, and that wasn’t as bad as the fall, the second wave in the fall, that was far more deadly than that first.
[00:14:19] Um, and it seems to have been, uh, the continuation of that, uh, mutated, more virulent, uh, form of influenza that we saw in the fall of 1918. Um, and that, that, uh, that was, uh, stopped as it burned through populations and by non-pharmaceutical interventions, like closure policies and distancing and all that sort of stuff.
[00:14:39] And then generally speaking, public health scholars say. That there rather than a fourth way of, although you sometimes will see that reported, uh, the flu becomes endemic after 1919, that is, we live with a seasonal flu. That’s the thing that we’ve all grown up with to some extent, you know, getting your flu shot, that kind of thing.
[00:14:55] And that’s what most public health scholars expect will happen with Corona. So was
[00:15:00] Zachary: [00:15:00] there the kind of blow back, uh, and, uh, misinformation spread during the pandemic that we see today, did that play a role in the, in the, uh, further ins of second, third, fourth,
[00:15:12] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:15:12] wave. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, so one of the things that struck me, I started researching this years and years ago when I was thinking about the intersection of domestic and foreign policy, uh, in, in the U S and the world war one context.
[00:15:24] And one of the things that was really striking to me was the way that one governments minimized. The threat of, uh, the flu. It was clear if you’re looking at the sources from individual people, that they were worried about the flu and that the flu is affecting families in the first wave and really hurting people in the second way of killing folks.
[00:15:42] Um, but the health officials, officials, the us surgeon general Rupert blue, for instance, can consistently says that it’s not so bad. Um, and there’s a lot of conflicting information that comes from. The higher level folks like federal folks, the Wilson Woodrow Wilson, for instance, famously or infamously, never once in public mentions the influenza pandemic, not once.
[00:16:02] Um, and you have something like one or two scattered references in all of his works letters and private correspondence. Um, so you know, the, at that level that’s striking, um, in terms of blowback and, and misinformation, it’s amazing. Um, the press from that era, you find things like it was one of my favorites that I love to teach our ads about what will help people, uh, continuous smoking will stop them from getting it.
[00:16:27] That’s a great one. Um, or another one is be aware, the telephone, you can get the flu. Um, or, you know, um, druggist recommends Vic Vicks, vapor rub, uh, you know, and limit the amount of people who can buy it. And it looks like, you know, some of the, uh, producers of different kinds of home remedies and, uh, things like that, you know, we’re, we’re, uh, Hocking them in all kinds of ways and, and, and drumming up support for their products saying, oh, there’s been a rub, a run on Vicks vapor rub, you know, drug use can only sell, you know, one per customer, that kind of thing.
[00:16:59] Uh, The, the other piece of the puzzle that I think is a little bit more like what we’ve lived through. Uh, and, and that, you know, obviously we’ve seen quack medicine, um, and conspiracy theories, but we’re, we’re abundant then. But another piece of the back, um, in that era that I think is good to actually get to your Palm.
[00:17:16] Zachary is, um, the people were afraid. So getting mixed messages from government, getting this misinformation, or lack of clear. Medical information in an era when people thought, Hey, modern medicine was curing things. You know, if you, if you look at the Philadelphia Inquirer, you’ll find, they say, you know, modern nursing halts epidemic, right as that Philadelphia way of second wave is crashing over the city.
[00:17:37] And the city is really struggling. W what are people to do? And one of the things you find in their letters, one of the things you find in red cross reports after. People literally starve to death in their homes because their neighbors wouldn’t help them. Um, they were that afraid of getting the flu, uh, things that they normally would have done just years before you could have relied on your relatives.
[00:17:57] There’s some searing stories of, you know, a sister not helping a brother, uh, and their, and their children, because they were so afraid. Um, and that’s the sort of thing we felt before. And I think a lot of people are still struggling with that fear and risk assessment, you know, right now today. And they’re likely to keep feeling that in some ways, because of the measures that we’ve had and either the lack of clear coherent real-time honest information.
[00:18:21] It seems to
[00:18:22] Jeremi: [00:18:22] me, Chris, that, uh, building on these really insightful, uh, points. It seems to me that the fear cuts in two directions, right? On the one hand there’s a kind of, uh, sheltering, uh, reaction, uh, that can lead us to not help our neighbors. Right. As you described so well, on the other hand, there can also be a sense of failure.
[00:18:42] Right. This, this is going the direction it’s going. I’ve been sheltering at home. I’ve stayed away from work for so long. I can’t do this forever. I’ve got to get back to my life. I’ve got to go. I’ve got to move on. Uh, we seem to be hearing that a lot today. W w where they’re similar reactions in 19 18, 19, 19.
[00:19:01] And what can we learn from those reactions to understand what we’re seeing
[00:19:03] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:19:03] today? So, one of my favorite quotes about this, I’ve written a little bit about, um, the experience of different cities and, and there’s some great analysis. There are people who are interested. There’s something called the influenza archive at the university of Michigan that has a city by city analysis of how they dealt with the pandemic.
[00:19:19] Um, but one, one of my favorite quotes was from a Portland, Oregon health commissioner in February, 1919, which strikes me as getting at some of what you were just mentioning. Um, and he argued the biggest thing we’ve had to fight in the influenza epidemic has been apathy or perhaps the careless selfishness of the public.
[00:19:37] Um, you know, that’s, uh, that gets at a lot of how we’ve seen things progressing. Right? We’ve got those, who’ve been very serious and rigorous and self-sacrificing and others who have not, or unwilling to do that. Um, and then those who felt like they sacrificed enough, right. A sufficient amount. Um, and in the historical record, you see that in, in a number of places, San Francisco is known as the mask city.
[00:19:58] It had one of the strictest mask mandates. Um, uh, you know, I think some people, some folks in the press of overemphasis. The, the blow back to that, there was the anti mask league there. That was the one really big example, but it was only four or 5,000 self-reported people involved in that league, uh, pushing back against masks.
[00:20:16] There were, are isolated cases across the U S who pushed back against masks. But, um, but rather than thinking about it as a, you know, Push a political push or, or significant organized movement. I think that quote from the health official is better. It’s sort of lots of individual decisions, people in different ways, um, getting fed up with, with some of the hardships of trying to do your best in a pandemic or, or not.
[00:20:42] And so you see. Fantastic photos in 19 18, 19 19 of people throwing their masks in the air when the mandates come off, um, or rushing out into the streets in November of 1918, even though the pandemic was still on because the war had ended, they wanted to celebrate, they wanted to gather, um, and, and th those turned out to be super spreader events.
[00:21:03] Um, but they couldn’t be stopped. Uh, public health officials had a really hard time with that. So sort of what are some of the lessons of that? I mean, you know, one clear one is that people want to gather and resume their lives as normal. And so, you know, public health officials need to figure out how you can allow as much of that as possible with a reasonable risk assessment.
[00:21:20] So it’s pretty clear from data like from 1918 and 1919, that gradual reopening is the way to go led by, uh, you know, led by real-time data. So if you see infections and hospitalizations, go on. Um, you know, you need to begin to slow down. Um, uh, you don’t want to totally all at once. That’s a very clear lesson from every place.
[00:21:41] We have good data from 1918 and 19, including not just the U S um, so that that’s one piece of the puzzle, but how to get people out there doing things, you know, this gets at the underlying personal element here is really important. The other piece of that, which we haven’t yet really touched on is the politicization.
[00:21:57] Right. You know, one thing that strikes me today that is very different is that though there were politics of the pandemic in 1918 and 19, it did not map onto parties. Um, you know, they both parties in their midterm elections, which they were able to hold in fall 1918, even with a raging pandemic. Um, The both parties use the politics of the pandemic to say, Hey, the other one is prioritized different interests in the public health measures, but neither one said, uh, that, that all the public health measures were, were due to, you know, um, some kind of false sense of the medical needs of the moment or some kind.
[00:22:34] Political rhetoric that was advantageous only to the party and not actually serving the interests of the people. So the th th what that devolved down to was, Hey, did you prioritize saloons or churches basically. Uh, and then that mapped onto, uh, ethnic politics, um, and religious politics within parties in different regions.
[00:22:50] So what just, w wasn’t as simple as it is now, and that’s it, but that is an enormous difference because we’re still living. And, and we may never be able to get out from under the politicization of public health measures, which really seem to have hamstrung the U S and frankly, lots of other countries and an unpredicted, uh, and somewhat unpredictable ways from the historical record.
[00:23:09] Jeremi: [00:23:09] Right. Right. And how Chris, do you think, uh, the vaccines which are new and extraordinary. How they interplay with this story? How does that change our narrative today? And what echoes do you see despite the difference between a vaccinated or partially vaccinated population today, and then obviously a non-vaccinated population in 19 18, 19, 19.
[00:23:32] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:23:32] Yeah. So, you know, one thing that’s interesting from the 1918 moment is that there was a rush to get effective vaccines out there. Right? There’s a long history of inoculations in us history. I’d like to, uh, to note this right, George Washington famously, you know, inoculated, uh, had all incoming, uh, revolutionary war troops, inoculate against smallpox.
[00:23:50] He was a real believer in this. He himself had had a smallpox, uh, The Ben Franklin famously lamented that he didn’t get his son inoculated and his son died. Um, so there’s a long tradition, American tradition of vaccination. You might call it nodulation, vaccination, somewhat different, but in any case, you know, uh, close enough for us to, to call that tradition.
[00:24:10] Um, and in 1918 there was a push to get effective vaccines and you actually saw them raced across the country. You saw. Uh, inoculations of, of military personnel. Um, but then they turned out to be not effective at all, basically. Um, but there was this effort, uh, to Mount, you know, uh, uh, a robust medical RMD, you know, mission to, um, to prevent and stem the disease any further.
[00:24:33] Uh, so what’s amazing in this moment, what we were all talking about last year was could this be the fastest global race to an effective vaccine and, you know, the history of science and history. Of of humanity and the answer is yes. Uh, and so then it is so striking that the second stage there, uh, is that many American citizens, but others around the world, um, for a wide variety of reasons aren’t taking up the vaccine, um, that’s astonishing in world historical proportions and it’s sort of, yeah.
[00:25:03] Just pausing to reflect on that. You know, in my view, as historian, uh, Woodrow Wilson would have ordered, um, mass vaccinations, if they’d been, um, uh, proven effective or would have tried to do so that there would be Federalist questions there. Um, Americans very much wanted an effective vaccine in 1918. So what’s changed in the last 102 hundred and three years.
[00:25:25] And
[00:25:26] Jeremi: [00:25:26] what do
[00:25:26] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:25:26] you think. I’m hoping you can answer that Daryl.
[00:25:31] Jeremi: [00:25:31] I mean, to me, I’ll just, I’ll, I’ll put something out there for you as more of an expert to, uh, on this issue to chew on. Um, you know, it does seem to me, Chris, that one of the big differences is that, uh, people do believe they can keep themselves safe and are less dependent upon the community around them.
[00:25:48] They underplay. How their lives interact with others. You, you stated this so clearly, uh, when you talked about how the healthcare system, uh, affects all of us, whether we have COVID or something else, we can get sick with, uh, with an ancillary disease and, and, and get poor treatment as a consequence of the system being overrun.
[00:26:06] But I don’t think a lot of people think that way, the same way they think they can school their kids and not worry about the public school system. I think many people think they can one way or another, keep their families safe and not worry about it.
[00:26:17] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:26:17] Man. I, I buy that. I think that’s a, that’s a good way to put it.
[00:26:21] You know, there’s a mixed with that is, is a sense that every person, their own doctor, right web MD will help me solve this or figure this out. Maybe have a different source of information. So that’s, uh, uh, you know, maybe perhaps you’re buying the conspiracy theories or you have a different media outlet that you’re, you know, um, listening to, you know, that we’re just far fewer of those in 1918.
[00:26:43] That’s a piece of the puzzle. I think one that I’ve been to. You know, in recent years of the recent months of this pandemic, um, but recent years has been the change in how Americans in particular think about sacrifice and sacrifice for the collective. Good. And I don’t want to overplay, you know, American willingness to sacrifice in the past.
[00:27:01] Um, but it does seem. The sort of individualist ethos that you’re describing, um, does factor into this and that, you know, uh, people were, were more willing, um, particularly at the local and state level where the, all the action was in pandemic, public health in 19, 18 and 19, uh, citizens were willing to abide by those measures more or less in ways that we have not seen, um, quite as much, although I think to be very fair, Uh, when the future histories of this moment are written, it could be that we wind up saying the vast majority actually did agree to those measures and did sacrifice for the public.
[00:27:37] Good. Um, so a question of sort of how much sacrifice is the real issue. And I think that’s where we’re seeing this individualist ethos, um, manifest itself in some of the ways that you’re you were laying out. I also think that that we’ve come become complacent about kind of modern medicine. And modern science, um, in really subtle ways, you know, uh, one of the big things going on in the early 20th century was a kind of rise of science.
[00:28:02] This sense in the progressive era of the perfectibility of man and his institutions, that’s the kind of language that they use then. And the ways in which modern science was leading the way, the social sciences as well, and then history. Thought of as social science, um, you know, and so that one of the challenges of that pandemic was that it, through, into sharp relief cast, into sharp relief, some of the false promises or unfulfilled promises of modern medicine, it simply couldn’t stop 650,000 Americans, 75,000 Americans from dying, you know, and maybe as many as 50 million people around the world, you know, modern methods.
[00:28:33] Wasn’t up to the task right now, modern R and D medicine has been, uh, amazingly with vaccines, at least, although not with treatments yet, really fully for COVID. Um, what, what is, you know, why are we taking that for granted? That, that seems to be a piece of this era that we’re, that we’re complacent about?
[00:28:52] Um, the morale. Key capabilities of modern science. I think there’s those things
[00:28:58] Zachary: [00:28:58] false sense that, uh, that, that every opinion is valid and that there can never be just one actual factual, scientific response, right. That you might have your science and your medicine, but I, as the individual get to have my separate opinion and you have to respect that in a way that I don’t think people are willing to accept, uh, the sort of accepted belief.
[00:29:19] Um, without first sort of formulating their own opinion, even though they don’t know what they’re talking about.
[00:29:25] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:29:25] Yeah, by that. I think, you know, one thing that’s interesting about the Wilson moment is it cuts both ways. There Wilson famously started his comp committee on public information. And one of the famous things that the muckraker George Creel, who was the head of that said that there’s sort of no difference between truth and lies, except, you know, in the power of those ideas to persuade.
[00:29:44] And that was kind of what the war time state was all about in world war one. Um, and in that era, Progressive’s w did make the argument that you just made, that, that there is something really fundamentally important about truth and facts. And yet these progressive journalists who were tasked with promoting patriotism and sacrifice during the war, um, played fast and loose with us.
[00:30:05] So. Maybe we live with a long legacy of some of the modern, bureaucratic ways in which states function, which is to say that there’s less difference between truth and lies in the politics of sort of entering into the social arena, entering into the political arena that Teddy Roosevelt’s. Sure.
[00:30:23] Jeremi: [00:30:23] And, and I think Chris, um, one of the challenges as well is these are complex issues and, um, it’s, it is understandable that, uh, someone who has gone through the vaccination regimen as most of us have, and I hope everyone listening gets their vaccines.
[00:30:41] Uh, it is understandable that someone who’s has gone through that. And so. Of course, we’re not comfortable with that process, but did it anyway, they did the right thing. Uh, they now feel like, wait a second, I’ve done this. Why should I have to wear a mask? Uh, why should I have to go through these procedures?
[00:30:57] And, and of course they should, uh, it’s still important, uh, not to spread the virus, uh, even if you are vaccinated, but that’s a complicated narrative to spin out, right? It’s not about. Just doing one thing or just doing a few things. And again, there is the way in which this persists, I’ve heard a number of students say, and, and colleagues say, you know, we’re now into a year and a half of this.
[00:31:18] How long do I have to speak to people through a mask? How long do I have to go get curbside instead of eating at the restaurant I want to eat. And, and I guess my question for you, Chris, in addition to your reflections on that is what worked in 19 18, 19, 19, clearly the effects of the influence.
[00:31:38] Pandemic would devastating on the United States in the world. More Americans died from influenza than from the war, uh, which is astounding. Um, yet society went forward. Uh, and as I think it is it’s true today, the majority of the people complied and did the right things. Uh, w w what helped people get through this over that long period, which I think was so much more difficult than because they didn’t have the internet and they didn’t have credit cards.
[00:32:05] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:32:05] How did they do it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, so the first point, I think is a great one, right? The pandemic persistence, um, one. One element that I like to emphasize in thinking about, um, pieces of persistence then, um, is the us public health infrastructure had basically no policymaking power. It was state county, city governments that really determined responses to the pandemic.
[00:32:30] How long things stay in Dawn, whether or not they were mandated mandates or recommendations, all that sort of stuff. That’s really where the action was. Uh, and that has remained. Uh, w the states and cities counties that we’ve seen do well on this pandemic got out in front of it, had good public health messaging and confronted the reality of what you just so aptly put, right?
[00:32:50] This is complicated. This is changing, you know, remember, uh, March of 20, 20 people thought transmission happened through packages. If you were at all concerned about that, you might’ve been wearing gloves, you might’ve been wiping down things coming into your house. You might’ve been wearing gloves and masks and wiping things down and all kinds of things, depending on.
[00:33:08] Your, um, view of that, that changed rapidly. Right? And so did a sort of CDC guidelines on masks and leaving aside the politics of that, the reality of the underlying science. This question of is there a singular answer is that there may be in any given moment, some good answers, provisional answers, but they’re.
[00:33:24] And that’s really unsatisfying that’s that pendulum swinging that Zachary was talking about, because at some point you want to take that masks off. And so maybe you can find some evidence or maybe the evidence on masking is changing as it is right now, as we record this, right. That, you know, uh, even vaccinated people are being recommended to wear masks and said, but perhaps we don’t want to, we’re finally happy to not be doing that.
[00:33:45] Those of us who’ve been as diligent as possible, or maybe a double masking. Um, so you know, that that’s unsatisfying. Um, but you know, the question of where. Responses operate best and are most effective, I think is a really important one. And I think it’s very clear from the historical record and what’s happened recently that that local is where the action is at and that’s where we need to focus our efforts at communicating good knowledge about those complex issues.
[00:34:10] And I think for us, you know, The two of us in university complexes, you know, uh, and, and in schools, you know, that’s about, um, being honest and open about we’d know what we know and what we don’t know and not pretending to have all the answers. So that’s, that’s one part. So then the second part of the question, sort of what worked.
[00:34:27] A couple of pieces of this, you know, one thing that I’ve been surprised at and the fellow scholars of the flu pandemic of 1918 have as well, is that we all expected the flu to become endemic, uh, or the coronavirus to become endemic around now or in the next year. Um, which is which it is becoming, but we didn’t expect this second wave.
[00:34:46] And this is where we started our conversation. You know, that the virus is ahead of us on mutations, that, that Delta is here. Far more infectious, is it 50% more? Is it a hundred percent more it’s more virulent. Um, so that it seems to be having, you know, higher infection and bad disease outcomes. Um, you know, so who’s to say there won’t be another way of, and another mutation, will it be better?
[00:35:08] Will it be worse? You know, we can’t know. Um, but, uh, you know, fortunately for those living in 1918 and 19, the most virulent wave was that second wave in fall 1918. And even though. Still a lot of deaths and suffering, um, in winter and spring 19, 19, um, it had been burning through populations, uh, so that by, you know, 1920, you’ve got a seasonal flu.
[00:35:28] That’s still pretty bad. Let’s be honest. A lot of people are still dying of the flu, but it’s nowhere near as bad with none of the public health measures being taken that we’d seen before. But lots of local areas. If you go to local records and counties and cities, they’re still analyzing what happened in 1918 and 19 in 1920 and 21.
[00:35:46] And they’re trying to figure out when to throw off. Protocols like non-pharmaceutical interventions, closing schools and social distancing, and even masking, uh, when the flu is coming around. And I think for, for me, one of the lessons of that moment is that we all need to be setting our expectations.
[00:36:01] Right. And that is to say it is probably not reasonable to set expectations of no masking, just hanging out business as usual normal life, um, anytime soon. And that’s hard to say. And it’s really harder to take on board, but that lesson of 1918 to 19 to 20 to 21 is that, that virus infectious diseases, no, no borders and mutate rapidly.
[00:36:23] And so good public health starts with citizens. Uh, it starts with that quote that I was saying, let’s not be carelessly selfish, you know, let’s all take a role in this. That’s sort of what you were saying. Let’s all get our vaccines. So one of the things that worked was that, you know, local officials kept their eye on the data to try to figure out how to stop it from spreading when it did show up.
[00:36:44] So when you saw some flu cases in a major city, Dallas in 1920, they’re ready to throw on provisions. They’ve got nurses ready to go. They now have a better sense of what treatment will work. And I think that’s the kind of thing we’re going to see for the, in the near term, you know, historians know better than.
[00:36:59] To do too much predicting, but that seems like the kind of thing that helped setting expectations better when people came out on the other side of all that fear that we were talking about earlier, it’s
[00:37:08] Jeremi: [00:37:08] such a good point. And I, and I think one of the things that comes out so well in your research and your recounting of it, Chris is is that, um, there are no simple moments when you can say we’re finished or when it’s safe to go back to life as before.
[00:37:24] But that doesn’t mean. That everything has to be locked down. There’s a lot in between locking down society fully and opening up fully and too much of our discussion. Is this dichotomy or are we opening society? Are we keeping it close? When in reality, what you’re describing is much more case by case adaptation at the local level to the conditions at that moment, which might mean.
[00:37:48] Opening schools, but not necessarily for certain group or requiring masks at schools, but not just keeping schools closed or keeping them fully open. There’s a lot in between. And, and in a way, uh, it seems to me that’s a theme of democracy throughout our podcast. Right. Which is that the, the simple statements.
[00:38:07] Sound politically powerful. Don’t match up with the historical realities. It seems to me, that’s what you’re
[00:38:11] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:38:11] describing. I think you’re so right. And you know, I’ll, I’ll double down on that comment to say, you know, one of the things we saw in the pandemic and we continue to see, which is really insidious is this false binary between the health of the economy and public health.
[00:38:24] And you saw this very much in the debates of 1918 and some of that pushback say by auntie maskers and others, but what economic historians have proven is that proactive measures for public. Need not be, uh, you know, draconian and lasts forever. These lockdowns don’t necessarily need to last forever to be effective.
[00:38:41] And in fact, the cities and states, um, uh, counties that took those kinds of measures in 1918 and 19, and the ones that have most recently, um, bounce back economically as well. And so you can. Partial openings. You can have an economy that’s doing okay. And to be taking into account the public health of citizens and the wider population, um, it need not be an either or, and we need to step away from that kind of thinking, which is simple.
[00:39:06] It’s sometimes very persuasive, but it’s just flat out wrong and the historical record, and it has this kind of slippery slope logic, um, which, which is really problematic for democracy because we. W if you’re pitting the economy versus people’s deaths and disease, if you’ve taken a really serious misstep, and that was something that was debated in 1918 and 19, um, and, and the mistakes that were made then are ones that we’ve, uh, tragically seen, you know, in some states and cities, um, in, in 2020, into 2021, and they need not be made again, it’s, it’s
[00:39:36] Jeremi: [00:39:36] so important.
[00:39:37] And I, I’m going to double down on your doubling down and say that as a fellow historian, I can come up with very few examples of communities that ignored. Or climate dangers and came out better for it. Just the opposite, just the opposite. Uh, and, and I think that’s an important reminder to, to all of us.
[00:39:56] Uh, Zachary, I know you’ve been involved in a lot of discussions. It’s hard to avoid them, uh, with other students, uh, school administrators and others about these exact issues surrounding what what’s appropriate to do. What’s not, should there be high school sports or not? Should people be in the classroom or at home?
[00:40:13] Does Chris’s historical announce. Help you to advance those conversations from where they are right now? I think
[00:40:21] Zachary: [00:40:21] they do. I do think it’s, it’s also particularly interesting when we’re thinking about young people today, my generation, that, that were really coming of age, uh, as learners, as students during this pandemic, which means that we’re getting a lot more of the public health, uh, history and science.
[00:40:40] Uh, that then your generation did. And I think that’s actually really key because I think we have a lot more. In these institutions of public health, because we’re having to interact with them from a very early age, in a way that most Americans today did not have to.
[00:40:55] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:40:55] It’s a
[00:40:55] Jeremi: [00:40:55] really good point. I mean, when you were going back to school in the spring, they took your temperature every day.
[00:40:59] Right?
[00:41:00] Zachary: [00:41:00] Right. And, and, and even, even younger kids, uh, in elementary school, they are also interacting with the system. So I think hopefully, uh, we will come out of this experience with a greater. In our institutions of public health, if not in our
[00:41:14] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:41:14] leaders. Right, right.
[00:41:15] Jeremi: [00:41:15] Yeah. Chris, to, to sort of bring this to a close on an optimistic note, as we always like to, as you know, um, do, do you see this cause for optimism, do you see this, uh, tragedy that we’re living through?
[00:41:28] Uh, having an important enlightening effect on us and, and was there a second? Similar implications to the earlier pandemic of 19 18,
[00:41:37] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:41:37] 19, 19. Well, I think, um, so I can easily come up with a number of ways in which this pandemic is transformative. We’ve seen it be transformative in terms of our thinking about inequality, who is served by public health infrastructures, you know, that, that marginalized people, um, and, and those with lower socioeconomic status, uh, suffer more and pandemics it’s very clear.
[00:42:01] Um, the nature of work. So remote work as much easier. You alluded to technology Gino in 19, 18 and 19. Um, you know, people, you couldn’t work from home, you either worked or you, you didn’t work. Right. Uh, and so, uh, in the wartime industries and some industries, there were 40% drops in who was working in the plants.
[00:42:19] Um, not because they were all sick, but because they were making, you know, uh, risk benefit calculations and saying, I’m not going into work with this raging infectious disease around, um, you know, Vectors there. I think, you know, uh, students, uh, jury still out on what this generational dimension, you know, will be, um, in, in 1918, you know, the majority of people, the vast majority of people who died were 18 to 45, something possibly half to two thirds, you know, this, uh, Pandemic has had the bulk of those deaths located at the 65 and over range, you know, what does that say?
[00:42:52] I mean, I’m curious to know it what’s Zachary would have to add there. What does that say about what the experience is? But if some epidemiologists suggest that there’s kind of generational impacts are more important when these, um, pandemics hit the younger generations, because those who come through it or suffer through it, um, are more transformed by it.
[00:43:10] So, you know, um, the state of Pennsylvania famously in 1918, there were 45,000 or. Um, you know, it was really a horrible, uh, hit to younger people, uh, wage earners in that era. And, and one of the things coming out of that pandemic that we’ve heard a lot about that I think is also problematic is that there was an easy transition into the roaring twenties.
[00:43:29] So-called. That wasn’t the case, or at least the roaring twenties, weren’t that roaring in the way that we tend to think that’s a simplistic rendering. There was inflation, there was the rise of the Klan and xenophobia, um, really, uh, draconian immigration restrictions, uh, uh, kind of inward looking set of domestic politics.
[00:43:48] You know, Calvin Coolidge is famous, the business of America’s business kind of logic. Um, you know, not a lot of looking out for fellow citizens, you know, I’ll learn a lot of those lessons contrast. I often note is that, you know, Canada developed a, a pretty robust department of public health in 1919 because they realized their federal structures were not very good at dealing with pandemics.
[00:44:09] The U S did not. One of the things that historians often talk about is the U S really did centralize, you know, the U S public health service with any policymaking power. Much later. So, you know, what lessons will we learn there? You know, how should we prevent the next pandemic? Should we have a better strategic national stockpile?
[00:44:24] Yes, obviously. Um, you know what, we’ll, what lessons have we learned about public private in research and development for vaccines, um, and being ready to go when, when a new infectious disease arrives, because it’s a web. You know, not an F. Um, but I do think there’s some, you know, some things here that, that are interesting, uh, about the nature of work, the nature of interactions, the possibilities for global exchange and interchange, and the fact that, you know, we haven’t mentioned it yet, but black lives matter protests span the world during a pandemic.
[00:44:54] Um, that would not have been something that many of us would have predicted that the mass gatherings were possible and weren’t all super spreader events. Um, so, you know, I think. Activism thrived, even in the midst of a pandemic is a fascinating theme to pull out that the sort of thing that we historians will see in a generation and trace where it goes.
[00:45:13] And a lot of that is located in the younger generation, frankly, younger folks. Um, partly because, uh, they had a higher risk tolerance and were less at risk. So that’s an interesting piece of this puzzle too. Where’s that going to go? As Zachary was implied. Perhaps where will this generation’s experience of the pandemic lead them greater solidarity and more democratic activism?
[00:45:34] Will it be more atomistic will be more individualistic. We’re trapped in front of our zoom. You know, we’re trying to get ours sort of thing, you know, uh, unclear to me what, where that will go. But, uh, but it seems very clear that the experience of the pandemic will be definitive in the lives of many school, age, kids, people in high school, middle school, lower school and college.
[00:45:55] So
[00:45:55] Jeremi: [00:45:55] well said, Chris, and I’ll just add, and I think this, this might be a nice way to wrap up so many of your brilliant comments here, you know, it, it, it, um, it seems to me that one big outcome of this has been, uh, a greater sensibility of how vulnerable our lives are, even those who are most privileged and, uh, what that means as you’ve already pointed out.
[00:46:16] Policy lessons and future activities is uncertain. Uh, but it’s very hard to make the case now, especially to citizens of all ages who have lived through the last year and a half that somehow Americans are invincible. And somehow we have all the answers. Um, maybe that’s not enough. But I do think that’s quite a sea change, I think from when you and I was Acura’s age or when you, when you and I were college students, or even when you and I were in our twenties that long ago, but it was a little while ago.
[00:46:47] Right. Um, and, and I think, uh, I think a certain humility, which I take from your own work, uh, was an outcome of 19 18, 19, 19, that generation. Uh, whether we like their politics or not, uh, they, they had a sense of the limits of American power and the limits of American security that I think, um, was lost to a later generation and maybe has been found again by this generation.
[00:47:12] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:47:12] And I think if you go global with that, that there’s a new. Interesting dimension that, you know, coming out of 1918, Woodrow Wilson would have had the U S and the league of nations and would have had the us participating in anti pandemic efforts, an anti-infective disease efforts through the league of nations, which the U S did not do.
[00:47:28] Um, and you know, is this a moment where kind of global consensus could be reached on really fighting the collective challenges that face humanity, right. That talk about the fundamental democratic question of our era climate change and the kinds of things that transcend what anyone nation state.
[00:47:45] Jeremi: [00:47:45] Chris, I think you’ve given our listeners and agenda and you’ve displayed for us how the study of the past elucidates our world today.
[00:47:54] It doesn’t offer a simple recipes of any kind and the differences are as great as the similarities, uh, but the echoes and the experiences of the past to help us to understand our own time better. And, and I do think they offer us, uh, some ways to think about what our democracy should look like going forward and the kinds of debates, the worthwhile debates and conversations we should be.
[00:48:17] Having, not the distractions that often take us off of our trajectory. I think, um, Chris, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us today and, uh, we hope to have you on.
[00:48:28] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:48:28] Well, it’s wonderful to be here and thanks. Thanks Jeremy. And thanks Zachary for sharing your insights and your poetry. Yes,
[00:48:34] Jeremi: [00:48:34] Zachary, thank you for your pendulum metaphor for us for today that I think worked perfectly for our discussion.
[00:48:40] Uh, and thank you most of all to our listeners. Thank you for joining us for this week of this is democracy.
[00:48:54] Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols: [00:48:54] This podcast is produced by the liberal arts, its development studio and the college of liberal arts at the university of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harris. Codine stay tuned for a new episode every week. You can find this is democracy on apple podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher.
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