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For all the devastation of pandemics, there is a historic forgetfulness around them. They are not events that get grand public memorials, and their tolls tend to be remembered individually, rather than collectively, by those who experienced loss.It was this scarcity of historical on-the-ground experiences that the Rev.
Mar 20, 2020 The influenza pandemic of 1918–19 resulted from such an occurrence and affected populations throughout the world. An influenza virus called influenza type A subtype H1N1 is now known to have been the cause of the extreme mortality of this pandemic, which resulted in an estimated 25 million deaths, though some researchers have projected that it caused as many as 40–50 million deaths.
Tourscher was thinking of in 1919, when he compiled first-hand accounts from nuns who had worked as nurses during the influenza outbreak that had just ravaged Philadelphia. Their stories filled over a hundred pages, published in installments in the Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia in,. In an introduction, Tourscher wrote that it was important to “assemble facts while they are still a living memory”:Facts unrecorded are quickly lost in the new interests of changing time. Incidents of personal experience, even the most touching and pathetic, pass away generally with the memory of those immediately concerned.
We have little left now, beyond mere material statistics, and vague impressions drawn from “paper accounts” of the epidemic of cholera which visited Philadelphia in 1832. We know probably as much of the “Black Death” of 1348 in Europe or of the “Sweating Sickness” of 1529 in England as we do of the “Yellow Fever” which raged in our cities of the South, and threatened the North, in 1849 and again in 1854.Philadelphia was the hardest-hit American city in the 1918 flu pandemic, and Tourscher concentrated on the events of October of that year. The city saw a huge spike of cases after organizers, despite concerns from local medical experts about the disease’s presence in the population.
Six weeks later, 12,000 would be dead. What was really needed were more nurses, especially as medical workers themselves became ill.The immediate effect was to overwhelm the healthcare system. Makeshift hospitals were set up in gymnasiums and event halls—large gathering spaces that were no longer needed as the city’s social life shut down. What was really needed were more nurses, especially as medical workers themselves became ill.
On October 10, 1918, Archbishop Dennis Joseph Dougherty wrote a letter not only authorizing the opening of parish buildings to care for the sick, but also permitting uncloistered nuns to step in as nurses. The Oakland Municipal Auditorium in use as a temporary hospital during the 1918 flu pandemic viaSisters from across the city volunteered. They mostly did not have medical training, just the will to help.
“I was struck, at first, with a fearful dread, for I never came in close contact with death but once in my life,” said one nun who worked at an emergency hospital on South Broad Street. “But realizing what must be done, I quickly put on my gown and mask.” Another described her first day, October 12, at Philadelphia General Hospital, a charity hospital in West Philadelphia:That walk from the entrance to the wards seemed unending. One of the Sisters whispered to me: “How shall we ever get in?”—meaning the next day. I replied: “I think we’re getting in beautifully; what worries me is, how shall we get out?”What they found there in the wards, as other Sisters did around the city, were bodies in every bed and not enough hands or resources to care for them. At an emergency hospital at Broad Street and Snyder Avenue, a Sister related how new patients would have to wait in an office until someone died and a bed was free. Patrick’s Emergency Hospital, another Sister recalled, were “conditions beyond the power of description”:It is one thing to read or hear of suffering, quite another to behold it in reality.
About the Hall were arranged cots, containing men, on the first floor, women and children on the second. Nearly every race and condition were there represented.Many of Philadelphia’s hospitals were segregated, and the Sisters performed essential work visiting the sick who were at home and had nowhere else to go and often no one to care for them. Frequently they were suffering as much from starvation and neglect as from the illness itself. One Sister remarked that it was “not always poverty that left the people destitute,” it was “the fear and dread of the scourge” that kept others away.In crowded tenements, nuns discovered whole families who were sick, where bodies of the dead sometimes stayed for days as they waited for the overworked undertakers. The Sisters administered what assistance they could: cleaning, bringing food if needed, and, importantly, offering some humanity. One older woman “asked the Sisters to comb her tangled hair.”While Philadelphia’s working-class and immigrant neighborhoods were particularly hard hit due to their close quarters and lack of access to healthcare, the flu knew no bounds of money or class. One man drove to the convent in his car to ask for help, because although “he had wealth at his command, he was unable to get a nurse for his dying wife and child.”Some who were treated recovered, like an eighteen-year-old stenographer who fell into delirium so intense that she was strapped to her bed.
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Others did not, including a young soldier who had recently returned from fighting in France. Faith and the desire to give last rites to believers are constantly present in the Sisters’ narratives—they saw this work as part of their calling. Yet they cared for everyone, regardless of religion. They went into the humble apartments of the poor and the mansions of the rich.
They went door-to-door to homes of strangers across the city. Many of them also got sick.
Most of the Sisters in Tourscher’s account are anonymous; he wrote that “self-advertising is alien to the spiritof these women of Christian refinement.” But concluding the compiled accounts are several pages devoted to “Deceased Sisters” who died in the pandemic. Attention is given to each of their short biographies, such as Sister Mary Carina, who “did splendid work among influenza sufferers in St. Joseph’s Parish” and died on November 6, 1918, and Sister M. Inviolata, who, when “the call came for volunteers to nurse the epidemic victims at the Philadelphia Hospital,” had “offered her services generously,” and died on October 26, 1918.October 1918 was a harrowing month for Philadelphia, but eventually new cases declined, the emergency hospitals closed, and the city returned to life. Coming off both the end of World War I and this pandemic, many survivors were eager to move forward. These accounts, recorded just months after the pandemic’s peak, are stories of empathy and selfless care. They were preserved so that they would be remembered, now a century later providing a chronicle of people who did what they could to help and lived through a terrible time that seemed like it would go on forever.
As governments fight the COVID-19 pandemic, Snopes is an “infodemic” of rumors and misinformation, and you can help. Our coronavirus fact checks. Any questionable rumors and “advice” you encounter. To help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the or for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.In mid-April 2020, as some U.S.
However, the timeline presented in this meme is inaccurate and, contrary to what the text implies, the second wave of this pandemic was not fueled mainly by a lack of social distancing.The 1918 pandemic, commonly known by the “Spanish flu,” left at least around the world, including 675,000 in the United States. Comparatively speaking, about soldiers and civilians died in WWI. There were three waves of illness during this pandemic, which started in the spring of 1918 and subsided in the summer of 1919, the most deadly of which was the second wave that peaked in the fall of 1918.We haven’t been able to definitively determine the percentage of deaths that occurred during the deadly second wave. We can say, however, that the U.S.
Saw close to 200,000 deaths from the pandemic in alone. Lost approximately 115,000 soldiers during all of WWI.While the majority of deaths did occur during the second wave, these deaths can’t be solely attributed to a lack of social distancing after the war. In fact, a from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that the second wave started in September 1918, approximately two months before Germany officially surrendered on Nov. 11, ending WWI.History.com that the second wave of the 1918 pandemic was largely fueled by sickened soldiers who traveled to countries across Europe, the U.S., and Africa:While the global pandemic lasted for two years, the vast majority of deaths were packed into three especially cruel months in the fall of 1918. Historians now believe that the fatal severity of the Spanish flu’s “second wave” was caused by a mutated virus spread by wartime troop movements In late August 1918, military ships departed the English port city of Plymouth carrying troops unknowingly infected with this new, far deadlier strain of Spanish flu. As these ships arrived in cities like Brest in France, Boston in the United States and Freetown in west Africa, the second wave of the global pandemic began.“The rapid movement of soldiers around the globe was a major spreader of the disease,” says James Harris, a historian at Ohio State University who studies both infectious disease and World War I. “The entire military industrial complex of moving lots of men and material in crowded conditions was certainly a huge contributing factor in the ways the pandemic spread.”While military parades and a lack of social distancing at the end of the war did not cause the second wave of the 1918 pandemic, they did exacerbate the problem.Much like today, many cities in the U.S.
Closed schools, businesses, and other public spaces during the 1918 pandemic. (You can read some old news clippings urging social distancing.) These actions were largely successful in slowing the spread of the disease, as noted in a recent study from the:A recent analysis concluded that in some cities (San Francisco, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Kansas City), where the measures were implemented early, they reduced transmission rates by up to 30–50%. Cities that implemented such measures earlier had greater delays in reaching peak mortality, and had lower peak mortality rates and lower total mortality. The duration that these “social distancing” measures were kept in place correlated with a reduced total mortality burden.There are also several historical examples of cities that flouted these rules, only to see an increase in influenza cases.
Philadelphia, for instance, hosted a 200,000-person parade about 10 days after they saw their first deadly case of the “Spanish flu” in September 1918. Louis was also scheduled to hold a parade around this time, but they canceled the event due to the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, Philadelphia would wind up with a death rate more than that of St. Louis:The deaths due to the virus were estimated to be about 385 people per 100,000 in St Louis, compared to 807 per 100,000 in Philadelphia during the first six months — the deadliest period — of the pandemic.To sum up: The 1918 pandemic left an estimated 50 million people dead, which is more than double the death toll of WWI. While a disregard of social distancing rules did result in an increase in influenza cases, Armistice Day parades commemorating the end of WWI were not the cause of the deadly second wave, as it was already underway by the time WWI came to an end.Klein, Christopher. “Why October 1918 Was America’s Deadliest Month Ever.”History.com.
Retrieved 14 April 2020.Asmelash, Leah. “Philadelphia Didn’t Cancel a Parade During a 1918 Pandemic. The Results Were Devastating.”CNN.
15 March 2020.CDC. “1918 Pandemic Influenza Historic Timeline.”Retrieved 14 April 2020.Strochlic, Nina and Riley Champine. “How Some Cities ‘Flattened the Curve’ During the 1918 Flu Pandemic.”National Geographic.
27 March 2020.DiSalvo, David. “Can Social Distancing Really Stop Coronavirus? Look to the Spanish Flu Pandemic for Answers, Expert Says.”Forbes. 29 March 2020.Pambuccian, Stefan. “The COVID-19 Pandemic: Implications for the Cytology Laboratory.”Journal of the American Society of Cytopathology.
26 March 2020.Censky, Abigail. “Michigan Stay-at-Home Order Prompts Honking, Traffic-Jam Protest.”NPR. 15 April 2020.
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