A bit of pandemic history, th Spanish Flu 1918

Philadelphia Threw a WWI Parade That Gave Thousands of Onlookers the Flu
The city sought to sell bonds to pay for the war effort, while bringing its citizens together during the infamous pandemic
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September 21, 2018

It was a parade like none Philadelphia had ever seen.

In the summer of 1918, as the Great War raged and American doughboys fell on Europe’s killing fields, the City of Brotherly Love organized a grand spectacle. To bolster morale and support the war effort, a procession for the ages brought together marching bands, Boy Scouts, women’s auxiliaries, and uniformed troops to promote Liberty Loans –government bonds issued to pay for the war. The day would be capped off with a concert led by the “March King” himself –John Philip Sousa.

When the Fourth Liberty Loan Drive parade stepped off on September 28, some 200,000 people jammed Broad Street, cheering wildly as the line of marchers stretched for two miles. Floats showcased the latest addition to America’s arsenal – floating biplanes built in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard. Brassy tunes filled the air along a route where spectators were crushed together like sardines in a can. Each time the music stopped, bond salesmen singled out war widows in the crowd, a move designed to evoke sympathy and ensure that Philadelphia met its Liberty Loan quota.

But aggressive Liberty Loan hawkers were far from the greatest threat that day. Lurking among the multitudes was an invisible peril known as influenza—and it loves crowds. Philadelphians were exposed en masse to a lethal contagion widely called “Spanish Flu, ” a misnomer created earlier in 1918 when the first published reports of a mysterious epidemic emerged from a wire service in Madrid.

For Philadelphia, the fallout was swift and deadly. Two days after the parade, the city’s public health director Wilmer Krusen, issued a grim pronouncement: “The epidemic is now present in the civilian population and is assuming the type found in naval stations and cantonments [army camps].”

Within 72 hours of the parade, every bed in Philadelphia’s 31 hospitals was filled. In the week ending October 5, some 2,600 people in Philadelphia had died from the flu or its complications. A week later, that number rose to more than 4,500. With many of the city’s health professionals pressed into military service, Philadelphia was unprepared for this deluge of death.
Preview thumbnail for 'More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War
More Deadly Than War: The Hidden History of the Spanish Flu and the First World War

This dramatic narrative, told through the stories and voices of the people caught in the deadly maelstrom, explores how this vast, global epidemic was intertwined with the horrors of World War I―and how it could happen again.

Attempting to slow the carnage, city leaders essentially closed down Philadelphia. On October 3, officials shuttered most public spaces – including schools, churches, theaters and pool halls. But the calamity was relentless. Understaffed hospitals were crippled. Morgues and undertakers could not keep pace with demand. Grieving families had to bury their own dead. Casket prices skyrocketed. The phrase “bodies stacked like cordwood” became a common refrain. And news reports and rumors soon spread that the Germans –the “Huns” – had unleashed the epidemic.

The earliest recorded outbreak of this highly virulent flu came in March 1918, as millions of men volunteered or were conscripted into service. Some of the first accounts of an unusual deadly illness came from rural Kansas, where recruits were crowded into Camp Funston, one of dozens of bases hastily built to train Americans for combat. A large number of Funston’s trainees were checking into the infirmary with a nasty bout of “grippe, ” as it was often called. Doctors were baffled as these young men –many healthy farmboys when they reported – were flattened with high fevers, wracked by violent coughing and excruciating pain. Some soon died, turning blue before choking on their own mucus and blood.

When packed boatloads of American soldiers shipped out, the virus went with them. By May 1918, a million doughboys had landed in France. And influenza soon blazed across Europe, moving like wildfire through dry brush. It directly impacted the war, as more than 200,000 French and British soldiers were too sick to fight and the British Grand fleet was unable to weigh anchor in May. American soldiers were battling German gas attacks and the flu, and on the other side of the barbed wire, a major German offensive came to a halt in June when the Kaiser’s ranks were too ill for duty.

With summer, the Spanish flu seemed to subside. But the killer was merely laying in wait, set to return in the fall and winter—typical peak flu season—more lethal than before. As Philadelphia planned its parade, bound to be a large gathering, director of public health Krusen had ignored the growing concerns of other medical experts and allowed the parade to proceed, even as a deadly outbreak raged on nearby military bases.

A political appointee, Krusen publicly denied that influenza was a threat, saying with assurance that the few military deaths were “old-fashioned influenza or grip. ” He promised a campaign against coughing, spitting and sneezing, well aware that two days before the scheduled parade, the nation’s monthly draft call-up had been cancelled because army camps, including nearby Camp Dix in New Jersey and Camp Meade in Maryland, were overwhelmed by a conflagration of virulent influenza. Philadelphia’s parade poured gasoline on the flames.

Krusen’s decision to let the parade go on was based on two fears. He believed that a quarantine might cause a general panic. In fact, when city officials did close down public gatherings, the skeptical Philadelphia Inquirer chided the decision. “Talk of cheerful things instead of disease, ” urged the Inquirer on October 5. “The authorities seem to be going daft. What are they trying to do, scare everybody to death? ”

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