Stories and anecdotes of the impact of the Great Pandemic in individual states were gathered for presentation at Pandemic Planning Summits held in each state.
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Louisiana State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
April 25, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched Louisiana.
As the pandemic began to spread around the country in 1918, the president of the New Orleans Board of Health announced that the city's climate would prevent a high mortality rate if the flu ever did come to the city. He would be proven tragically wrong.
Though exact dates and numbers are not known for sure, the disease probably came to New Orleans during the first week of September-around the same time the steamship Harold Walker set sail from Boston for New Orleans. The pandemic was already raging in Boston, and so, before the Harold Walker arrived in New Orleans, 15 passengers had been struck, and three had already perished. By the time the Harold Walker docked in New Orleans, those afflicted found they were not alone. The pandemic was already raging in Louisiana.
By the third week of September, thousands were being afflicted. Hundreds were dying.
By the end of October, 14,000 people in New Orleans had been struck by the flu. More than 800 had died.
People were desperate for a cure.
One doctor in New Orleans believed sulfur would "kill the germ." He advised his patients to "put a small amount of sulfur in each shoe each morning, and goodbye influenza." To make sure the sulfur was "working," he told his patients to carry a silver dollar in their pockets. According to the doctor, the silver would change color in reaction to the sulfur emitted by the body.
The sulfur did not work. Few things did.
The pandemic finally ended, but the dreadful memories remained.
A year later, the flu erupted again in New Orleans. By the time it had afflicted just a handful of people, the terror of the previous year was sufficient to trigger alarm. A Public Health Service officer sent an urgent telegram to Surgeon General Blue reporting: "Ten cases influenza...Doctor Kibbe reports spreading rapidly."
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to Louisiana.
Maryland State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services
February 24, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched Maryland.
It first appeared at Camp Meade on September 17th, 1918. By September 28th, more than 1,700 cases were reported across the state.
At that point, Baltimore's health officer declared, "There is no special reason to fear an outbreak in our city." The next several weeks would prove him tragically, terribly wrong.
Nearly 2,000 cases were reported in the city on October 10th. Sickness often led to death. On the single day of October 19th, 169 people perished because of the pandemic.
Everyone was out sick. There were too few milkmen, too few firefighters, too few telephone operators, and too few gravediggers. The city didn't have enough workers to process death certificates. Because it was illegal to conduct burials without one, bodies and caskets stacked up inside-and outside-funeral homes.
Hospitals were overwhelmed. Flu patients filled six wards at Johns Hopkins. Finally, the hospital had to close its doors. Three staff physicians, three medical students, and six nurses perished with the patients for whom they were providing care.
By the most conservative of counts, at least 75,000 of Baltimore's 600,000 residents were struck by the flu. More than 2,000 died.
Circumstances were just as terrible all across the state. In Salisbury (located on Maryland's eastern peninsula), about 800 of the town's 11,000 residents were struck by the pandemic. Forty-one percent of the population became ill in the town of Cumberland.
The total number of Marylanders who perished in the pandemic will never be known. Reports are incomplete; the pestilence was too overpowering. But its echoes of terror, of suffering, and of loss remain.
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to Maryland.
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Massachusetts State Summit History Supplement
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
February 7, 2006
The Great Pandemic also touched Massachusetts.
It first came here, to Boston. On August 27th, 1918, two sailors at Commonwealth Pier reported in sick with influenza. The next day, there were eight. By the third day, influenza had struck nearly 60 people.
That fire soon became an inferno, and within two weeks, 2,000 officers and men had been struck.
On September 8th, a spark of influenza touched Camp Devens, a military camp near Boston with about 50,000 soldiers. The conflagration that erupted is difficult to comprehend.
A physician - known only as Roy - described the situation as it appeared in late September. He wrote:
"This epidemic started about four weeks ago, and has developed so rapidly that the camp is demoralized and all ordinary work is held up till it has passed....These men start with what appears to be an ordinary attack of . . . Influenza, and when brought to the Hospital they very rapidly develop the most viscous type of Pneumonia that has ever been seen.
Two hours after admission they have the Mahogany spots over the cheek bones, and a few hours later you can begin to see the Cyanosis (pronounce "Cy-an-no-sis") extending from their ears and spreading all over the face, until it is hard to distinguish the colored men from the white.
It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes, and it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate. It is horrible. One can stand it to see one, two or twenty men die, but to see these poor devils dropping like flies sort of gets on your nerves. We have been averaging about 100 deaths per day, and still keeping it up."
The pandemic was just as dreadful for civilians. Scarcely six weeks after it touched the first sailor on Commonwealth Pier, the pandemic was raging all across the state. By October 1st, the Public Health Service estimated that there were at least 75,000 cases in the state, excluding those from the military camps.
At that point, nearly 800 people had already died from influenza here in Boston. Another 200 had perished from pneumonia. By the time the next week ended, nearly 1,300 more Bostonians had died.
By the time the pandemic finally passed, an estimated 45,000 people had perished in Massachusetts. That is about two-thirds of a sellout crowd at a Patriots game, or more than two consecutive sell-outs at Boston Garden.
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to Massachusetts.
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Michigan State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Alex Azar
Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services
April 5, 2006
We are also seeing some of the same symptoms from victims of the 1918 strain in victims of today's H5N1. If the H5N1 strain, or any other strain of animal influenza, were to develop into a pandemic strain, no one would have immunity. Let me tell you a little about how Michigan was affected by the 1918 pandemic.
In late September 1918, Michigan officials reported to the U.S. Public Health Service that "very few cases have been reported." Two weeks later, however, the state failed to report at all, possibly because the deteriorating conditions had made reporting difficult. By October 18th, officials sent but a terse report, saying "50 deaths [from influenza] had occurred in the State." But, by the 25th, they reported that "from October 1 to 18, inclusive, [there were] 11,983 cases and 258 deaths in Michigan." The pandemic seems to have peaked in Michigan by the end of October, with the week that ended on the 26th seeing 21,541 cases and 922 deaths.
In the Upper Peninsula, a public health nurse named Annie Colon and a physician used a handcar to reach isolated patients in remote logging camps. Colon said, "We worked day and night. We'd ride 20 and 30 miles at night through the deepest woods. We would find ten people all huddled together, fully dressed in a tiny log cabin, and all with fevers over 104 degrees.... We'd hitch a flat car to a handcar with wire, put a board floor on, mattresses over that, plenty over covers and a canvas to cover the top and break the wind, and we'd carry patients 15 or more miles to a decent bed and a chance to live.... Everybody worked hard and long with unselfish spirits."
The elections in Michigan coincided with the peak of the pandemic. The U.S. Senate election turned on a slim majority-less than 4,000 votes, and there certainly were more than 4,000 people laid low with the flu.
In late October in Detroit, an eighteen-year-old boy named John Carrico noted that his father "went on home and remained at home until about three o'clock. When he got back, he called up the Red Cross headquarters and told them to send a nurse out to our house tomorrow morning. He certainly is scared of the Spanish influenza. I never saw anyone so scared as he is. If fright will make you sick, well I do believe he will catch the ‘flu' as sure as anything." Though his father's fears were typical, and many around him did have the flu, he wasn't actually sick.
In Flint, people complained over how many physicians had been drafted. Observing that another doctor in town had been drafted into military service, resident William W. Clark asked, "Should not our citizens as a unit stand behind our board of health in protest to the government against further drafts...until this epidemic has abated?"
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes again, it will strike in Michigan.
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Minnesota State Summit: History Supplement
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
December 14, 2005
Here in Minnesota, the Paulson family was one of the first to be touched. The Paulsons were residents of the town of Wells, about a two-hour drive to the southwest from Minneapolis.
Marie Paulson had sent three of her seven children off to the Great War. On September 14th of 1918, she received word that her 22-year old son Walter had caught pneumonia. Within three days, Walter was dead. A day after Walter was buried in Wells, his brother Raymond fell ill. Raymond would die, and so would his sister, Anna Valerius.
That was just the beginning. On September 25th, the Surgeon General announced that the first cases of influenza had been discovered in Minnesota. Here in Minneapolis, a large number of army recruits who were being temporarily housed at the University of Minnesota became ill.
In less than a week after influenza was first reported, there were more than 1,000 cases in Minneapolis. On October 10th, all public meetings were banned. On the 11th, all schools, churches, theaters, dance halls and billiard parlors were closed.
As in Cedar City, the disease continued to spread. By October 17th, the Minneapolis City Health Commissioner estimated that nearly 3,000 people had died due to the disease.
By the time the pandemic was finally over in Minnesota at the end of 1920, more than 75,000 people had been sickened. Nearly 12,000 were dead.
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Mississippi State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Alex Azar
Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services
May 1, 2006
We are also seeing some of the same symptoms from victims of the 1918 strain in victims of today's H5N1. If the H5N1 strain, or any other strain of animal influenza, were to develop into a pandemic strain, no one would have immunity. Let me tell you a little about how Mississippi was affected by the 1918 pandemic.
It appeared to come on slowly in the last days of September 1918. Initial reports included "a few cases...from Montgomery and Leake Counties and suspected cases from Meridian."
The situation quickly worsened. One week after it appeared, Mississippi officials reported to the U.S. Public Health Service that "epidemics have been reported from a number of places in the State," and, "the epidemic is spreading rapidly." By the middle of October, thousands of cases around the state had been reported. And the rates of infection continued to grow.
In fact, in the last days of October, more than 6,000 new cases of the flu were occurring every day-the flu was everywhere, and no one was safe.
In 1918, as today, Brooklyn, Mississippi was the rural home to the Forrest County Agricultural High School. Occupying one of the highest points of land in the neighborhood and situated a mile from the small village of Brooklyn, the school was relatively isolated by nature and their self-imposed quarantine.
Consequently, the flu did not reach the school in the earliest stages of the pandemic. This gave the U.S. Public Health Service Assistant Surgeon General C. Armstrong the opportunity to experiment with a promising new vaccine to inoculate against the flu. This, however, proved unsuccessful.
In early December, the school was forced to shut down as more than 45 percent of the students-both vaccinated and unvaccinated-fell ill.
State health reports said, "It is the consensus of opinion of all who observed these cases that there was nothing special in character which differentiated the unvaccinated from the vaccinated."
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to Mississippi.
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Montana State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By Dr. Ken Moritsugu
Deputy U.S. Surgeon General
May 22, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched Montana.
By the time that Montana officials made their first report to the U.S. Public Health Service on October 4, 1918, the pandemic was already sweeping across the state.
They failed to report for the next two weeks, probably because they were so overwhelmed in combating the disease. By October 21, officials made a report, which although "very incomplete," still told of more than 3,500 cases of flu.
Montanans became desperate as thousands became sick and hundreds died. When traditional medicines failed, residents of Butte turned to the herbal remedies of Chinese physician, Dr. Huie Pock. His patients claimed that the remedies saved lives. If they did, they did not get to nearly enough people.
Loretta Jarussi of Bearcreek, Montana recalled young, healthy people passing through her tiny town, only to be reported dead two days later.
Jarussi said:
People would come along, and...they'd stop and say hello to us. My mother was very friendly. She loved to see those people. She was kind of lonesome there, you know, just us kids and her. So when anybody passed by, she always stayed with them. And, you know, maybe a week later, they'd say so-and-so died, and they had been past our place. So many people had that flu, and young people, and they died.
She also recalled what happened when her father contracted the flu. By the time he took the third dose of medicine prescribed by an Army doctor, he felt certain he was going to die.
He called all the kids around the bed and said, "This is for you," and "You're supposed to do this," and, "This is yours," etc. Then he kind of went into . . . I don't know . . . a sleep, a deep sleep. And Mama thought-she really did-he had died, but he came out of it, and he felt better. But it took two years to get over that.
Loretta's father was far from alone.
On November 1st, Montana officials said that at least 11,500 people had been afflicted with the flu over the past three weeks. The toll could have been higher, since officials admitted that their reports were incomplete.
The final tallies of suffering will never be known, but echoes of suffering and loss remain.
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to Montana.
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Missouri State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
February 23, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched Missouri.
It began burning in both big cities-St. Louis and Kansas City-at about the same time, the first week of October in 1918.
On October 7th, Henry Keil, the Mayor of St. Louis issued a decree closing "all theaters, moving picture shows, schools, pool and billiard halls, Sunday schools, cabarets, lodges, societies, public funerals, open air meetings, dance halls and conventions."
Not long afterward (October 17th), the Kansas City Star proclaimed, "A DRASTIC BAN IS ON." It was.
Ordered closed immediately and indefinitely were all schools, churches and theaters. Public gatherings of 20 or more people were all prohibited, including dances, parties, weddings, or funerals. Crowding in stores was banned. Streetcars were forbidden to carry more than 20 standing passengers. Elevators were sterilized once a day. Telephone booths were sterilized twice.
Yet the pandemic continued to burn across the state. And scoundrels and heroes stepped forward to seize the opportunity it wrought.
One Missouri physician wrote to the U.S. Public Health Service offering to sell his miracle influenza cure for the "nominal price of $4.50 per patient." In case the Public Health Service thought that too high a sum, he also offered his services to the Army medical department at a surgeon major's pay.
Meanwhile, students at the American School of Osteopathy in Kirksville, Missouri (in the northern part of the state, about four hours from St. Louis)], graduated early so that they could join the fight against influenza.
Despite all those efforts, the pandemic still took a terrible toll. By the end of October, more than 21,000 Missourians had been stricken. More than 500 had perished.
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to Missouri.
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Nebraska State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services
February 23, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched Nebraska.
No one knows when it first came, but by October 1st, 1918, it was already burning throughout the state.
On October 7th, there were 400 cases of influenza here in Lincoln. Twenty-five hundred more were reported in Omaha (whose population at the time was about 177,000). Rural doctors were taxed to their limit, since by mid-October, some counties were reporting between 250 and 500 cases each day. During the single terrible week when the pandemic peaked (Oct 26th), nearly 21,000 Nebraskans were stricken. Almost 1,500 died.
During the desperate month of October, Nebraskans did all they could to control the contagion. The mayor of Hastings (located about an hour-and-a-half drive west-south-sest from Lincoln) issued an order closing theaters, churches, schools, pool rooms and card rooms. Schools were closed in Omaha. Indoor meetings were banned, and church services were moved outside.
Home remedies were as prevalent as they were ineffective. The Hastings Tribune recorded that some Nebraskans wore garlic amulets. Vick's VapoRub was recommended. So were Vacona, a medicated salve, and something called Dr. Pierce's Golden Medical Discovery.
Nothing worked. By the time that the pandemic finally passed, state doctors estimated that nearly 3,000 Nebraskans had perished because of it.
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to Nebraska.
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New Hampshire State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
May 26, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched New Hampshire.
It came here from Massachusetts, though no one is exactly certain when. But, by the end of September, influenza was already an inferno.
Here in Concord, a former mayor named Charles Corning reported, "Grippe [influenza] is sweeping over Massachusetts and New Hampshire as fire shrivels the fields, laying out communities and taking a toll of death unprecedented."
He continued, "A heavy sense of anxiety and apprehension like a dismal cloud in midsummer weighs heavily upon us because of the deadly ravages of the so-called Spanish influenza. Funerals jostle one another so the sable procession goes on."
The pandemic caused shortages of essential workers. Thirty to forty percent of the employees at the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company were sick, and so the company took out ads, imploring customers to cut out unnecessary calls and not to ask for the operator.
There were also terrible shortages of doctors and nurses. During the peak of the pandemic (around mid-October), a public health worker from the town of Berlin (located in northeast New Hampshire) reported:
It is hardly possible for me to describe the conditions in this community. I am the only experienced public health worker here with the exception of the staff. Saturday, I cared for forty patients, from four to nine sick in one family. Everything possible is being done. There are only seven doctors in the city.
The final toll that the pandemic took in New Hampshire will never be known. But the echoes here remain.
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to New Hampshire.
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New Jersey State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
May 31, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched New Jersey.
The first person to fall victim to the Spanish Flu in New Jersey was a soldier at Fort Dix who had just returned from Europe. It was the ultimate irony: to survive the perils of the battlefields of the Great War, only to fall deathly ill once returning home.
In the fall of 1918, that irony was beginning to play out throughout the country and around the world. Many others would suffer that same cruel fate in the days ahead.
On September 27th, the state health officer announced that the disease "was unusually prevalent" throughout the state. Within the next three days, more than 2,000 new cases were reported.
Scarcely a week later (October 6th) that terrible tally of the afflicted was equaled in a single city-Gloucester City (near Philadelphia).
The speed with which the disease killed was as shocking as the number of people it affected. One insurance agent recalled that, during the pandemic, "deaths were so sudden that it was almost unbelievable. You would be talking to someone one day and hear about his death the next day."
A New Jersey physician said that it was a common experience to speak with someone who appeared to be healthy one day and then come across them a few days later on the autopsy table.
New Jersey battled the disease as well as it could. On October 10th, the state banned all public gatherings.
Some experimented with a new vaccine. When it failed, alternative "medicines" were used, ranging from whiskey to red onions and coffee.
None of them worked.
In Newark, the city's medical community tried a large-scale public education campaign. They sent pamphlets on prevention and treatment to every household. Crowds were avoided and public funerals were banned to prevent the spread of the disease.
But despite these efforts, the disease raged on.
Medical facilities were quickly overwhelmed. The city of Newark purchased a vacant furniture warehouse to be used as an emergency hospital to help handle the overflow. Nurses and physicians were in short supply as well, as so many of New Jersey's healthcare professionals were in the war effort overseas.
Those health care workers who could help worked around the clock to do whatever they could. One physician treated more than 3,000 patients in one month. He recalled:
There was no need to make appointments. You walked out of your office in the morning and people grabbed you as you walked down the street. You just kept going from one patient to another until late in the evening.
Still, the dead bodies accumulated faster than they could be buried. At first, city employees and firemen helped to dig graves. Then teams of horses were used to plough trenches which could be used as mass graves.
On a single day-October 22nd-more than 7,000 new individuals were afflicted, and 366 were lost. Incomplete reports to the U.S. Public Health Service show that by that day, more than 150,000 New Jersey residents had been sickened with the flu. More than 4,400 had died.
By November, the disease finally began to relent, but countless families lay devastated in its wake.
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to New Jersey.
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New Mexico State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
March 28, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched New Mexico.
No one is sure when the pandemic first arrived, though it may have been carried into Carlsbad (southeast corner of the state) by members of an out-of-own circus. On October 4th, there were reports of "a few cases" in "several places." A week later, epidemics were reported in Albuquerque, Gallup (west of Albuquerque), and Carlsbad. And the pandemic continued to spread.
In some cases, Smith and Wesson and Colt stood in the way. Fearing introduction of the disease, armed vigilantes from across the state stopped trains from flu-ridden regions and forced passengers to get back aboard and return from where they came.
Those fears were well founded. The flu was afflicting thousands of New Mexicans, and claiming the lives of hundreds.
But on one occasion, fear proved more fatal than the flu itself.
A Las Vegas (east of Santa Fe) family, the Gardunos, all fell ill with influenza. Mrs. Clara Garduno succumbed to the disease first, and was soon pronounced dead. Health Department officials demanded that she be buried immediately to prevent the spread of the disease, and her husband secured the services of an undertaker.
Because three of her children were also very ill at the time of her death and not expected to survive, Clara's grave was left uncovered to allow prompt burial of the children as soon as they too perished. Two of the children died the next day, and as the undertaker began to bury the children, Frank Garduno asked to see his wife's body one last time.
To his horror, he discovered that his wife had not been dead at the time she was buried after all. In his fear and haste to bury influenza victims, the doctor who had pronounced Clara dead had been mistaken. She had been buried alive, only to suffocate in her coffin.
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to New Mexico.
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New York State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
July 27, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched New York.
The first sparks appeared during the last week of September 1918, when some 61 New Yorkers were diagnosed with the Spanish flu.
The pandemic soon became a raging fire. Less than two weeks after it first appeared, more than 2,500 New Yorkers were afflicted. Tens of thousands would follow them to the hospital. Thousands would follow to the morgue.
Nearly 4,000 New Yorkers perished from the pandemic during the first three weeks of October. At the same time, more than 4,500 more died in cities all across the state. In Rochester, 213 perished in one week.
Doctors fell alongside the patients they were caring for. One was Dr. George Gorrill, the superintendent of Buffalo State Hospital. There were far too few caregivers to begin with, for their thin red line had been stretched taut by the demands of World War I.
In an effort to fill those depleted caregivers, the junior and senior classes of the Buffalo Medical School were pressed into service. Shortly afterwards, the sophomore class joined them.
But there were still too few to care for all that had been afflicted. Acting Health Commissioner for the City, Franklin Gram said:
“It was no uncommon matter to find persons who had waited two or three days after having repeatedly phoned or summoned physicians, suffering and dying because every physician was worked beyond human endurance.”
All across the state, entire families were stricken with the disease at once.
In Albany, the Altman family, including nine-year-old Stella, her mother, and her three younger siblings, fell ill. Stella later remembered, “There was no help to be found anywhere; everyone was too busy caring for their own families.” Stella’s mother died, but the children could not attend her funeral, for they were too ill.
The Steins of New York City’s South Center Street were also afflicted. A charity worker who checked in on them found a baby dead in its crib and the remaining seven members of the family seriously ill.
In Brooklyn, a man named Michael Wind was six years old when the flu came to the city. He remembered:
When my mother died of Spanish influenza, we were all gathered in one room, all six of us, from age two to age twelve. My father was sitting beside my mother's bed, head in his hands, sobbing bitterly. All my mother's friends were there, with tears of shock in their eyes. They were shouting at my father, asking why he hadn't called them, hadn't told them she was sick. She had been fine yesterday. How could this have happened?
Unable to cope, Wind’s father left his children at the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum. The Asylum was soon filled with 600 children, most of them orphaned by the flu.
The great pandemic filled not only the orphanages of New York City, but also its hospitals and morgues. More than 90,000 New Yorkers were eventually afflicted. More than 12,000 perished.
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to New York.
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North Carolina State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
March 21, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched North Carolina.
The pandemic appeared in late September of 1918. On September 27th, 400 cases were reported in Wilmington. Additional cases were reported here in Raleigh.
It then spread like wildfire across the rest of the state. By October 4th, influenza was striking people in 24 counties, and epidemic in Raleigh and Wilmington. It burned through Fayetteville not long afterward.
Authorities did what they could to contain its spread. On October 5th, the State Board of Health called on the authorities of communities where the pandemic appeared to "promptly . . . close the school and all public meetings."
However, Dr. W.S. Rankin of the State Board of Health refused to approve the use of rum in emergency hospitals due to lack of evidence that it was effective against influenza. Instead the Board called for treatments of "sunshine and open air." Calomel, a purgative (and insecticide), was also prescribed.
Residents suffered terribly when the pandemic struck.
For instance, Selena W. Saunders, who accompanied a nurse in the textile town of Cramerton (located a few miles west of Charlotte) recalled:
"This new disease . . . struck suddenly, spent itself quickly in a burning three-day fever, often leaving its victim dead. The people lost faith in the remedies they had relied on all their lives, and they became frantic. Some of them locked themselves in their house, and refused to open the door for anyone.... Merchants nailed bars across their doors, and served the customers one-at-a-time at the doorway. We found whole families stricken, with none able to help the others. In one family the mother died without knowing that her son, who lay in the adjoining room, had died a few hours earlier."
In the city of Goldsboro, a resident named Dan Tonkel remembered:
"I felt like I was walking on eggshells. I was afraid to go out, to play with my playmates, my classmates, my neighbors. I was almost afraid to breathe. I remember I was actually afraid to breathe. People were afraid to talk to each other. It was like-‘don't breathe in my face, don't even look at me, because you might give me germs that will kill me.' "
Tonkel added:
"Farmers stopped farming; merchants stopped selling. The country more or less just shut down. Everyone was holding their breath, waiting for something to happen. So many people were dying; we could hardly count them. We never knew from one day to another who was going to be next on the death list."
By the time the pandemic passed, at least 13,000 North Carolinians had perished.
One of the victims was Ernest Carroll, who may have been infected while he was serving soup to those afflicted with influenza at the Tabernacle Baptist Church here in Raleigh. After he passed, Temple Baptist named its kitchen and dining hall after him.
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to North Carolina.
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Nevada State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
February 17, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched Nevada.
In 1918, Nevada's statewide population was less than four percent of what it is today-just 77,000 people. Yet between mid-October and late November, the state reported several hundred cases of the Spanish flu, as well as scores of deaths from it.
The exact numbers of Nevadans affected by the flu will never be known, because regular reports to the U.S. Public Health Service were never made.
Yet Nevadans reacted to the flu as those in so many other states did: City ordinances were passed that mandated the wearing of facemasks in public. All public gatherings were banned. In White Pine County (located in east-central Nevada), a countywide quarantine was enforced for over two and half months to help quell the spread of the pandemic.
Nevada even considered establishing quarantine stations along the state's borders to secure it from the disease.
However, these precautionary measures were not always popular. In Elko County (located in north-east Nevada), a schoolteacher named Eleanor Holland complained to fellow teachers that mandatory mask wearing was a ridiculous burden.
A short time later, she contracted the flu and nearly lost her life. She later recalled, "It didn't seem so funny when I came down with the flu and nearly died. Fortunately, none of the other teachers got it though they all helped take care of me."
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. This is not Stephen King. It happened in 1918, and if a pandemic strikes, it will come to Nevada.
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North Dakota State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
March 9, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched North Dakota.
On September 27, 1918, the Bismarck Tribune reassured readers worried about the Spanish flu, noting, "Doctors believe that if the people of North Dakota exercise ordinary care they need not fear the ravages of this disease."
They could not have been more wrong.
The first official notice that the flu was in North Dakota came to the U.S. Public Health Service in early October, when 75 cases were reported in Rockford in Eddy County (three hours to the northeast of Bismarck).
The onset of the flu was sudden and devastating. In less than a week, an optimistic Fargo Forum headline: "Spanish Influenza Hasn't Hit Fargo," yielded to a report of more than 100 cases.
North Dakotans tried to stem the rising tide of the disease. Schools, churches, and businesses were closed. Public gatherings of any kind were banned. All places of amusement, including dances, theaters, and pool halls, shut their doors. Transporting patients with influenza on trains became a crime.
Nothing worked. And North Dakota's health care community was overwhelmed.
By the second week of October, nearly 6,000 people had been afflicted. Hundreds died. The young and healthy were the worst struck. Of 173 listed influenza deaths in the Fargo Forum, 122 (70%) were between the ages of 18 and 35.
One was Christian G. Lucas, the eldest son of the mayor of the city, who died at the age of 21. Christian was a young man of great promise who wanted to do his part in the war effort. He entered the hospital the very day he received his induction orders from the Naval Aviation Corps.
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. If a pandemic strikes, it will come to North Dakota.
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Ohio State Summit
Opening Remarks Prepared for Delivery
By the Honorable Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services
February 17, 2006
That Great Pandemic also touched Ohio.
It was already raging by the time the first cases were reported to the U.S. Public Health Service on October 4th.
Ohioans reacted like many others across the country in attempting to contain the disease-they banned public meetings, closed the doors of colleges and public schools, and outlawed behaviors thought to spread the disease, such as spitting.
All was to little avail.
As the disease continued to spread, makeshift hospitals were set up to treat the sick. One such auxiliary hospital was the Majestic Theater at Chillicothe, Ohio (located about 45 miles south of Columbus), where there were so many victims that they were described as being, "stacked like cordwood."
The flu-and the fear of it-was everywhere. Advertisers and opportunists used it to sell their goods. It even featured in the popular cartoon, "Polly and Her Pals." It depicted the protagonist wearing a "bacteria bib" and bemoaning the fact that she never caught anything as "fashionable" as the Spanish influenza.
But thousands in Ohio did catch the flu. By the last week of October, Ohio reported 125,000 cases of the Spanish flu. That week, more than 1,500 Ohioans died.
More continued to fall. One Ohioan who died was the father of former (Ohio) Governor Jim Rhodes. Another was a nun, Sister Raphael O'Connor, who died just days before her fifty-eighth birthday while nursing influenza victims.
When it comes to pandemics, there is no rational basis to believe that the early years of the 21st century will be different than the past. This is not Stephen King. It happened in 1918, and if a pandemic strikes, it will come to Ohio.
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