Media coverage of the 1918 Influenza epidemic in the USA was minimized due to the political discourse of the time. During and after WW1, there was a significant contrast between media coverage of the pandemic and media coverage of political campaigns. The censorship of the media by political figures was largely motivated by the fear of receiving criticism which, in turn, could damage their campaigns. Politicians during this time were under pressure to find new ways to influence public opinion as major candidates for office had been forced to cancel speaking tours due to the rise in influenza cases. Although many restrictions were already in place to combat influenza, in 1918, President Woodrow Wilson fought for control of Congress and urged local officials to keep polling places open [1], even encouraging more political advertisements and personal visitations [2]. Thus, Wilson directly opposed medical advice in an attempt to focus public attention toward politics. There are also accounts of politicians expressing their distaste toward the newly implemented policies aimed at decreasing the spread of influenza [3]. Many even claimed that the disease was not serious and there was no occasion for panic, “The flu? Huh! Nothing but a little germ that flops up your nose.” They also diverged the focus of the public by promoting the claim that the type of influenza had very low fatalities, “not over one death out of every four hundred cases,” according to the N.C. Board of Health [4]. Image 1.1: Forced cancellation of speaking campaigns [2] Image 1.2 Quotes from politicians about campaign restrictions [3] President Woodrow Wilson was in office from 1913 to 1921 and was a major contributor to the pandemic’s minimization in the media. During his presidency, he was actively fighting the war while campaigning as an anti-war ideologist in order to win his 1916 election [5]. He was heavily criticized in the papers as “playing with politics.” Wilson had proof that the war was inevitable, but still campaigned that he had kept the country out of war after firing Secretary of War Garrison for urging preparedness for the war and replacing him with “pacifist” Baker. This caused many newspapers that once defended him to become agitated and more willing to publish criticisms of his policies. In 1918, Wilson responded by passing the Sedition Act making it illegal to speak or publish any language that was deemed disloyal, profane, or abusive toward the US government [4]. This extreme censorship and outright suppression of any opposing publications allowed the administration to publish their own campaign propaganda that enlisted many troops into the military. This was due to the propaganda significantly increasing American patriotism and loyalty during war time, and manipulating people who once opposed the war, or remained neutral, to support the military. The most famous example of this being the Uncle Sam war poster meant to enlist soldiers with a blank space below to add the address for enlisting [6]. Image 2.1 Uncle Sam pointing his finger at the viewer in order to recruit soldiers for the American Army during WWI [6] In 1917, Congress declared war against the Central Powers, and the Wilson administration began implementing more authoritarian policies in their effort to win the war. The government during this time allocated vast amounts of economic and material resources such as food, finances, labor, and fuel to the military. In 1917, Wilson passed the Selective Service Act which extended the draft to include males from ages 21 to 30 [7]. Later in 1918, Congress amended the act to include men from ages 18 to 45 and added about 3 million armed forces to the war effort. The training camps did not have enough capacity to shelter the new recruits and the quarters were tightly packed with men. These conditions significantly increased the spread of influenza, but the situation was of little concern to Wilson. The Wilson administration aimed to boost national morale throughout the media rather than shift the focus of the public toward reality and distract them from aiding the war effort. Although there was supported evidence that the spread of influenza was attributed to close contact and gatherings, the Wilson administration was not concerned about the disease’s impact on the civilian or military population. For example, the city of Philadelphia hosted a Liberty Bond parade in order to gather public support for the war. It was declared to be “a parade of 10,000 persons, representing every class of official and business life,” and raised millions of dollars by selling Liberty Bonds to fund the war [8]. Similarly, although Wilson had been advised to deploy fewer troops due to the rapid spread of influenza, he allowed for the continuation of the transfers, and thus, accelerated the spread around the globe. Image 3.1 States the location and route of the Liberty Bond Parade [8] Image 3.2: Describes the exhibition of resources and intent to raise money for the war effort [8] Although President Wilson and his administration tried to downplay the reality of the pandemic, in 1919, Wilson became ill from the same influenza he told the public not to worry about. It is speculated that he contracted the disease at the Versailles Peace Conference while negotiating the end of WW1 and collapsed in front of the other world leaders [9]. At the conference, Wilson argued for a ‘League of Nations” to settle any future international affairs. However, after Wilson suffered a stroke, which some believe to be an after effect of his previous influenza case, Congress rebuked his goal of uniting the nations as both his Congressional and public approval ratings fell [10]. Overall, politicians’ lack of involvement in inhibiting the spread of the influenza epidemic along with their deliberate choices to censor the media largely contributed to the acceleration of influenza cases References
1. Searcey, D. (2020, March 21). The Lessons of the Elections of 1918. Retrieved March 18, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/21/us/politics/1918-flu-pandemic- elections.html 2. Influenza Interrupts Political Campaign. (1917, October 21). The Evening Star - Washington, D. C., p. 9. Retrieved March 18, 2021, from https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx/f/flu/1680flu.0011.861/1/--influenza-interrupts- political-campaign?page=root;rgn=subject;size=100;view=pdf;q1=election 3. Flu Snag For Politicians. (1918, October 17). The Courier-Journal, Louisville, pp. 1-2. Retrieved March 18, 2021, from https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx/f/flu/3060flu.0005.603/1/--flu-snag-for- politicians?page=root;rgn=subject;size=100;view=pdf;q1=election 4. Kessler, R. (2018, June 13). Outbreak: Lies and Misinformation. Retrieved March 18, 2021, from https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/2018/05/outbreak-lies-and-misinformation 5. A Thinking Paper For Thinking People. (1918, September 7). Goodwin's Weekly, p. 7. Retrieved March 18, 2021, from https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/2010218519/1918-09-07/ed-1/seq-7/ 6. Flagg, J. M. (ca. 1917) I want you for U.S. Army: nearest recruiting station / James Montgomery Flagg. United States, ca. 1917. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/96507165/. 7. Ray, M. (2020, May 11). Selective Service Acts. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Selective-Service-Acts8. 8. Liberty Bond Parade. (1917, June 4). Evening Public Ledger - Philadelphia, p. 4. Retrieved March 18, 2021, from https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045211/1917-06- 04/ed1/seq4/#date1=1916&index=6&rows=20&words=Bond+Liberty+parade+Parade&s earchType=basic&sequence=0&state=Pennsylvania&date2=1919&proxtext=liberty+bon d+parade&y=7&x=20&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1 9. Jordan, D., Tumpey, T., & Jester, B. (2018, March 20). 1918 Pandemic Influenza Historic Timeline. Retrieved March 18, 2021, from https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic- resources/1918-commemoration/pandemic-timeline-1918.htm 10. Critics of President are Rebuked. (1919, January 31). The Pensacola Journal, p. 1. Retrieved March 18, 2021, from https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn87062268/1919-01- 31/ed-1/seq-1/
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The 1918 influenza pandemic hit the world at a vulnerable time, in the midst of World War I. The first wave occurred in the US in the spring of 1918, and the second began in the fall, just a couple of months before Germany signed the armistice ending the war [1]. With much of the world being engaged in such a devastating war, a lot of the news coverage of the pandemic played to this fact. In fact, the name ‘the Spanish Flu’ took hold because as a neutral country, Spain was one of the only countries able to freely publish information on the subject, causing an association to develop between the country and the virus [1]. This association did not stop other other false claims about the virus' origin from spreading, however, and a particularly common one was the claim that the Germans had purposefully infected Allied soldiers to weaken their enemy’s forces [2, 3]. While this may seem a farfetched theory, a look at the long and storied history of biological warfare makes apparent why people in those days might have found the idea so plausible. One reason why this theory may have been popularized was the seemingly logical progression of it all. Use of chemical weapons like chlorine gas and phosgene during WWI had been rampant [4], so why stop there? If the German forces were suddenly afflicted by this illness, why not make the other side suffer as well by allowing an infected soldier to spread disease to the Allies? One common theory was that a German ship brought the virus to Boston [5]. Of course, not all of the theories as to how the spread would have occurred were as simple as walking an infected German soldier right up to the Allies, or letting one be captured. U-boats and mutagenic gases were also frequently cited as tools the Germans may have used to infect Allied soldiers, as was Bayer aspirin, a drug manufactured in Germany [3, 6]. There were any number of ways the Germans could have used this flu to their advantage, if papers from 1918 were to be believed. Motive and opportunity were not the only reasons why people speculated that Germany was somehow to blame for the pandemic. The use of biological weapons has been recorded for centuries, and certainly extends far beyond that. Archaeologists have found prehistoric evidence that peoples in North and South America, Africa, and Asia all employed techniques of contaminating weapons like arrows in ways that likely introduced pathogens to the victim [7]. One example of this was a Melanesian tribe that covered their arrows with material from crab burrows that contained tetanus-causing bacteria. It is yet unknown the extent of such practices, or the effectiveness of them, but this demonstrates the likelihood that biowarfare has been at least attempted for thousands of years. In the ancient world, regardless of the actual use of biological weapons, there was certainly a fear of them. When Athens experienced an outbreak of disease in 430 BCE, they initially blamed the Spartans of poisoning the water [7]. However, there is little evidence of biological weapons, or even poisons, being used in war from ancient times until the 14th century. The earliest recorded example of biological warfare is also arguably the most well-known. In 1346, Mongols sieged the Crimean port city of Kaffa (also spelled Caffa). Having been struck by plague, and likely unable to maintain the siege for much longer, the Mongols were said to have catapulted diseased cadavers into the city in order to infect those inside the walls [8]. It is difficult to corroborate such reports, but some historians agree on the plausability of this account. Another possibility is that diseased rats carried the plague from Mongol camps inside the walls of Kaffa, which many rule as the more likely explanation [8, 9]. It is even debated if this event ultimately caused the spread of plague into Europe, initiating the black death (Figure 1). Figure 1: "Tentative chronology of the intial spread of plague in the mid-14th century"; implicates Kaffa as the route by which plague reached Europe [8] This is far from the only instance of specifically plague-based biowarfare. Similar accounts exist of cadavers being catapulted at enemy troops by the Lithuanians in 1422 and by the Russians in 1710 [9]. Biological weapons were also notoriously used against Native Americans during the conquest and colonization of the Americas. Spanish distribution of clothing contaminated with the causative agent of smallpox, the variola virus, amongst Native populations in South America in the 16th century led to widespread epidemics of the disease, and caused a significant number of deaths as a result [10]. Similar tactics would continue to be used across the Americas. A couple of centuries later, British forces would deliberately distribute blankets contaminated with smallpox to Native Americans to reduce their numbers during the French and Indian War [12, 10]. Figure 2: Native Americans had no natural immunity to smallpox, leading to severe illness and often death [11] Regardless of the extent to which biological warfare was truly practiced, stories of such events were well-known across the world. It is unsurprising that people in the US would suspect a German biological weapon giving the timing of the 1918 influenza pandemic intersecting with the final year of WWI. Even in 2020, with significantly more knowledge of the causative agent and not being engaged in armed conflict with the country of origin, conspiracy theories of Covid-19 being a biological weapon widely circulated [13]. It is arguably more justifiable for such conspiracies to have been popular in 1918. The timing of the pandemic, in conjunction with this long history of the use and suspicion of biological weapons, created a perfect storm for Germany to take the blame. References 1. Brown, J. (2018). Influenza: the hundred-year hunt to cure the deadliest disease in history. Touchstone.
2. Dicke, T. (2015). Waiting for the Flu: Cognitive Inertia and the Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 70(2), 195–217. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jru019 3. Johnson, N. A. (2018). The 1918 flu pandemic and its aftermath. Evolution: Education and Outreach, 11(1), 5. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12052-018-0079-5 4. Rancourt, R. C., Richardson, J. R., Laskin, D. L., & Laskin, J. D. (2020). Chemical Weapons. In Environmental Toxicants (pp. 261–284). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119438922.ch8 5. Davis, D. A. (2011). The Forgotten Apocalypse: Katherine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider,” Traumatic Memory, and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. The Southern Literary Journal, 43(2), 55. 6. Honigsbaum, M. (2018). Spanish influenza redux: revisiting the mother of all pandemics. The Lancet, 391(10139), 2492–2495. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31360-6 7. Carus, W. S. (2017). A Short History of Biological Warfare: From from Pre-History to the 21st Century. National Defense University Press. 8. Wheelis, M. (2002). Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 8(9), 971–975. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid0809.010536 9. Ligon, B. L. (2006). Plague: A Review of its History and Potential as a Biological Weapon. Seminars in Pediatric Infectious Diseases, 17(3), 161–170. https://doi.org/10.1053/j.spid.2006.07.002 10. Morse, S. A., & Meyer, R. F. (2017). Viruses and Bioterrorism. Reference Module in Life Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-809633-8.11007-6 11. Britain wages biological warfare with smallpox - Timeline - Native Voices. (n.d.). Retrieved March 20, 2021, from https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/timeline/229.html 12. Christopher, L. G. W. (1997). Biological Warfare: A Historical Perspective. JAMA, 278(5), 412. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1997.03550050074036 13. Imhoff, R., & Lamberty, P. (2020). A Bioweapon or a Hoax? The Link Between Distinct Conspiracy Beliefs About the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak and Pandemic Behavior. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(8), 1110–1118. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620934692 With any research project, documenting the research process has considerable value. Often, the process can be more telling than the findings. Taking a step back, this post will serve to provide a synopsis of our project’s development, along with a discussion of the subject we are researching and why it is relevant to the present. The nature of our research is highly interdisciplinary. Unlike many forms of research where individuals collaborate within the same field of study, this research aims to bring together students of various backgrounds to investigate the role print media played during the 1918 Influenza pandemic. This topic is especially pertinent in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as media plays an immense role in the dispersal of information and hence the public reaction to that information. Further, an interdisciplinary team is suited for this topic that transcends the boundaries of a single academic field. Although our research has been centered around the role of newspaper media during the 1918 Influenza pandemic, the specific focus of the research has been in flux while the research process progressed. After our initial inspection of primary newspaper sources from the time period, a few common themes emerged. First, it was apparent that the lack of media sources covering black communities was indicative of racial disparities during the time period. The effect of the Jim Crow Era policies was engrained in American communities. This was prevalent to such an extent that adjacent black and white communities experienced different patterns in epidemiological progression. [1] Secondly, advertisements within newspapers revealed the extent to which the virus was a mystery, as many ‘miracle cure’ products were presented as being an effective method of curing the illness without any scientific or medical merit. [2] Interestingly, some effective methods in preventing the spread of viruses, such as proper hand washing and social distancing measures, were promoted well before a virus was identified as the cause of this mysterious sickness. With these topics in mind, we then decided to look into what advertisements could tell us about the public’s response to the pandemic. However, there was some debate as to how, or even if, public response could be adequately and substantially gauged using the tools at our disposal. We decided that it would be difficult to identify the public’s reaction to what they were reading in the newspapers, as the newspapers themselves are our main primary sources. Instead, we decided to look at factors leading to the coverage of certain topics within the newspapers. After further research, we noted that the 1918 influenza pandemic coinciding with the end of the first world war led to increased political strife and tension, both globally and domestically. [3] Additionally, we found that the scholarly literature investigating the role of politics in the 1918 coverage of the pandemic was sparse. Noting that today political pressures play a significant role in media coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, we decided that delving deeper into the political pressures of 1918 and how politics influenced media coverage of the pandemic could be a productive direction for our project. When the class first discussed making this our specific research topic, some concerns were raised. The research would be largely qualitative, and political and media theories have been extensively written about by experts for decades, so as undergraduate researchers, we might have a hard time making valid assertions without the benefit of scholarly expertise. However, we discovered a useful source (https://usnewsmap.com/), that allows for specific word frequencies in newspapers across the country during the 1918 Pandemic to be numerically and graphically displayed. This source permitted a quantitative dimension to be included in the research so that it does not rely solely on the analysis of political theory. In addition, this furthers the extent to which the research is interdisciplinary. Although we have made great progress in the research process, there is still much work to be done, from further researching political theories to analyzing trends in the aforementioned word frequencies. By documenting and scrutinizing our research process thus far, our team will be better equipped to dive deeper into the later stages of the process to produce relevant and meaningful research. References
The 1918 influenza pandemic highlighted significant health and socioeconomic disparities within the US. But how do you go about researching these disparities when primary sources on them often do not exist? While gaps in primary source material are telling, and can be used to great effect in research papers, such gaps leave research groups like ourselves struggling for concrete information. With more resources or time at our disposal, the topic of how various demographic groups in Florida were impacted by the influenza pandemic could have proven to be a rich and interesting avenue to travel. While we unfortunately had to exclude demographics and disparities from our research question, the fact remains that demographic factors had significant and tangible, if not widely reported at the time, effects on how people experienced the 1918 influenza pandemic. Black Americans had up to this point suffered higher morbidity and mortality rates across the board in the early 20th century [1]. However, that did not stop eugenicists from claiming that black Americans must have more immunity to certain diseases, and influenza proved no different. Studies have found that the black population had a higher case fatality rate, despite also having a lower incidence rate, a conclusion that agrees with reports from black physicians at the time [1,2]. This lower incidence rate encouraged eugenicists’ claims, with the Chicago Commissioner of Public Health himself claiming that black people must have more immunity to the flu than white people1. Of course, there are many reasons why black Americans may have had lower incidence rates. One theory is that because of the environment many black communities lived in, they may have had greater exposure to the flu in the spring and summer, when cases were less likely to be attributed to the pandemic, and thus conferring immunity against the fall wave and beyond, leading to lower incidence rates during these times [1]. Another possibility is that segregation created a kind of natural cordon sanitaire [1,3]. This restricted contact outside of their own communities meant that black people may have been less likely to catch the virus, especially from white people. Of course, when they did become infected, the environment would have made it more difficult for them to fight the infection, explaining the higher case fatality rate as well1. Regardless of the practical explanations, these racist claims were not anything new, as similar claims about the immunity of black people, based in eugenics and biological determinism, had been repeated for over a century. While mainstream newspapers generally did nothing to push back against these ideas, black newspapers like The Chicago Defender documented the illness amongst black communities [1,3]. Figure 1:Headline from the Chicago Defender, Oct 19 1918 [4] Black Americans were also forced to protect their own communities in other ways. Very few black women were able to enter nursing school, and were entirely barred from serving with the Red Cross during World War I [5]. Black communities instead had to build their own schools and hospitals, providing not only care for people likely to be turned away from white hospitals, but a place to work for the black doctors and nurses turned away from working at those white hospitals [3,5]. These communities, already severely disadvantaged due to rampant poverty, segregation, and discrimination, had to support themselves through this crisis. Even when black nurses and doctors were allowed to enter white spaces, it was hard fought and on an extremely limited basis. In 1917, the Red Cross had reversed its policy barring black nurses, but by November 1918 had still failed to assign any of the black nurses who had enrolled to military duty [5]. In December of 1918, after the war was over, 18 black nurses were finally assigned to Army Camps Grant and Sherman, in Ohio, where they treated both black and white patients, but lived in segregated quarters [3,5]. Figure 2: Black women would have been excluded from nursing schools such as the Chicago School of Nursing, despite the urgent need for more nurses [6]. Black Americans were not the only racial minority to suffer disparately from the 1918 influenza pandemic. Native Americans were another group that suffered significantly higher excess death rates as a result of the 1918 pandemic [7], with some indigenous communities in Alaska and Canada reporting mortality rates of up to 90% [8]. One significant example of how the treatment of Native Americans impacted how they experienced the pandemic was the influenza outbreak at the Haskell Institute in early 1918, which demonstrated how the poor conditions faced by many young Native Americans had a clear effect on their health [9]. The Haskell Institute was one of many boarding schools that operated throughout much of the late 19th and 20th centuries with the purpose of stripping Native American children of their culture [10]. The abuse at these facilities is well documented, and it is unsurprising Haskell was hit so hard and so early by the pandemic. However, this case study is still telling of how particular demographics were affected differently by the pandemic. Native Americans in these boarding schools at the time were facing stressors due to being separated from their families and cultures, while also facing physical stressors in the form of abuse and malnourishment [10]. All of these stressors would have weakened the children’s immune systems, and so with the Haskell Institute being overcrowded and immunocompromised, 60% of the 750 students were infected with influenza, and 5 died [9]. Figure 3: A telegram from Haskell Superintendent Peairs to the Indian Office in Washington DC. Dated March 21, 1918 [9]. This only scratches the surface of the impact racial disparities had during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Racial minorities had to develop their own systems to respond to this crisis, or rely on racist systems for help when unable to develop their own systems. While the incremental advancement of black nurses being allowed to serve in the Red Cross was made, the continued empowerment of the American eugenics movement made what little progress this was feel empty. It is unfortunate that such an important and relevant topic was ultimately excluded from the purview of our research. Many black newspapers did not survive, while many white newspapers had no such reporting on the impact the pandemic had on racial minorities, limiting the primary sources that would be easily available to us. Given more time, and perhaps more resources, we would have been able to delve into this topic, and give it the time and care it deserves. References
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