The Last Time Humans Lived Through a Global Pandemic.

I’m a historian of twentieth century America, and the last time our nation went through a global pandemic was 1918-1919. I’m writing this post from quarantine. <br><br>Last week, I was prepping for classes when my son tested positive for Covid-19. I called everyone in his world—a day care, a nanny share, an occasional babysitter—to inform them of the result. The nightmare scenario was coming true: we’d all be quarantined. My son and I would lose our babysitting gig, and the two families that relied on us would have to juggle work and two little children. <br><br>When I called the day care, the director told me that they’d received a letter from the CDC informing them that quarantining wouldn’t be necessary. She’d been told that children don’t get sick from Covid-19. I’d read otherwise—that children could get the virus but express only mild symptoms.<br><br>Still, I hoped she was right. I had no desire to disrupt two families’ lives. And as it turns out, children rarely show extreme symptoms—a small mercy amidst a global pandemic. But that was the one consistent thing about Covid-19 at the time: we could not consistently count on anything. <br><br>The director was right that American children who contracted Covid-19 were not getting critically ill, though they could serve as carriers. But how would they interact with adults? How contagious was the virus? The answers to these questions varied depending on the morning you woke up. It was confusing, unpredictable, and downright terrifying. And yet, people on the front lines—health workers, daycare workers, delivery drivers—were working longer hours for lower pay and less recognition. It’s hard for me to put into words how angry I am.<br><br>I was not alive in 1918, and neither were you. But I can tell you as a historian that we have never been here before. Pandemics happen every few generations. But I do know that one of the reasons why we are so shocked and terrified is that we have never experienced this as a nation. <br><br>But our past does offer us valuable insights into how we should be processing this. What we do in the aftermath of a crisis is just as important as how we respond to it. We can learn a lot from 1918. <br><br>In 1918, the world fell apart, and then it put itself back together again. We had come out of a war that left 37 million casualties. Then, before we had time to process that trauma, 50 million people died of the Spanish Flu. The numbers are so high that it is hard to wrap your head around them. 50 million people died. At least 675,000 were American. Yet we do not talk or think about 1918 much. The average American would not be able to tell you much about it. <br><br>Why is that? It may seem obvious. The trauma of a global war followed by a global pandemic was simply too much. There’s a great deal of historic evidence that people repress memory of the holocaust, and I think something similar happened in the aftermath of World War I and the Spanish Flu. But I don’t think that’s the only reason. I think that we have a hard time processing the trauma of 1918 because it was an indictment of our society. We are taught to think about WWI as an avoidable tragedy. We talk about the mistakes many nations made—Germany’s use of unrestricted submarine warfare, the United States’ decision to enter a European war.<br><br>The Spanish Flu is different. As a historian, I do not think that we would have had a pandemic if we had a better society. We had a global war that killed millions. We subjected millions of young men to extreme conditions. There was no healthcare system, not even really a homeless system. <br><br>In the years that followed WWI, we did very little to address the causes of those issues. We compounded them. In fact, there is a reason why we don’t talk about them anymore. If we talked about them more, we’d realize that our nation is built on the principles of selfishness, greed, and militarism. We’d have to confront what we have done and continue to do to solve many social problems. We would confront that we have not, and continue to refuse to, handle this crisis humanely. <br><br>If anything, the United States saw a dramatic decline in the welfare state after WWI. When we talk about WWI, we talk about failed diplomacy and war tactics. We talk about the bravery of American soldiers and international diplomacy. But we rarely talk about the Spanish Flu. When we do, we talk about the virus itself, what would cause a virus to spread so far and wide, and how we can prevent that next time.<br><br>But we don’t talk about the reasons why this virus spread so far and wide. Why war and lack of economic security and lack of healthcare could so easily kill millions of people. When we do, we blame it on the virus itself. We talk about how society was so different back then, how we didn’t know enough about medicine to do better. But we did. We knew enough. We just refused to act in the interests of humanity. <br><br>It’s not that the flu was so easy to get. It’s that humans were so fragile and vulnerable. It’s not that we didn’t know enough about medicine. It’s that we didn’t have a system—a healthcare system, an education system, an economic system—that was organized to help humans. We organized to kill them. <br><br>In many ways, it is much worse now. It would be a hard job to find a point in history where the United States was more divided and more selfish. I do not think that we are any more organized to help humans than we were in 1918. In fact, I think we are far less organized. <br><br>There is an entire system of lies that define our nation. Among the worst is that treating others as we wish to be treated is bad. You should get yours, and then you will be happy. You should not give a cent to anyone else, because they’ll use it for drugs or booze. <br><br>We have an entire system of lies that define our nation. That treating others as we wish to be treated is bad. You should get yours, and then you will be happy. You should not give a cent to anyone else, because they’ll use it on drugs or booze. The fear of the poor is so powerful that it has caused us to strip millions of their healthcare. <br><br>We have an entire system of lies that define our nation. That treating others as we wish to be treated is bad. You should get yours, and then you will be happy. You should not give a cent to anyone else, because they’ll use it on drugs or booze. The fear of the poor is so powerful that it has caused us to strip millions of their healthcare. We should be processing this pandemic by considering why we have a for-profit healthcare system. It is not fair, or humane, or functional. But it is profitable. So we keep it. <br><br>If we think about the pandemic, we have to think about our entire system. I think that this is why the federal government is so often botching their response. They are organized to make money and kill people, not help them. It would be an amazing thing if our government could handle this pandemic compassionately. It would be an amazing thing if our government used this as a catalyst to create a healthcare system—a society—that is designed to help humans. But we can’t rely on them to do that. <br><br>As a historian, I can tell you that what we do in the aftermath of this crisis is just as important as how we respond to it. I am processing this as a historian. I am processing it as a mother too. I hope you all are as well.<br><br>It’s up to us to do it better. Let’s not make the same mistake we did in 1918. This is an indictment of our society. Let’s think carefully about that. Let’s take responsibility for it, and let’s make it better. <br><br>If you have more time or resources, give more. If you have less, take less. That’s the basic rule of mutual aid. You don’t have to give much. But you do have to give. You do have to take responsibility. <br><br>Millions of people are more vulnerable than you and relying on you. I can’t imagine a more beautiful act than showing up for them. I cannot imagine a more selfish thing than not.