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Chapter 29
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Great Influenza, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Leadership and Crisis
Truth, Free Press, and Propaganda
Science vs. Nature
Education, Research, and Institutions
Summary
Analysis
At the height of the 1918 pandemic, the Red Cross and Public Health Service were so flooded with distress calls that they had to keep turning down calls due to staffing shortages. Physicians started trying desperate measures to treat patients, some grounded in science, others less so. There was no time for clinical trials or peer review, so some physicians became superstitious about unproven cures.
The pressure imposed by the pandemic caused many doctors to try methods that resembled an earlier period of medical history. This dramatizes how good science needs time and how, while sometimes good science can be performed when necessary in a crisis, it is not the ideal condition.
Themes
Elsewhere in the world, things were little better. From Greece to Italy to Britain, physicians were testing treatments with little to no proof that they actually worked. Hundreds of millions of people around the world couldn’t see a doctor at all, and a small industry of snake oil cures started advertising itself in the press.
The conditions of the pandemic, particularly the desperation, seemed to foster anti-scientific thinking. The fact that the press wouldn’t print real news about the pandemic but would print advertisements for snake oil (i.e., fake) cures is yet another indictment of how the press was run at the time.
Themes
By mid-October, vaccines developed by some of the world’s best scientists finally became available for some. Meanwhile, the Army Medical School developed its own vaccine. Major publications like the Journal of the American Medical Association remained hesitant about the benefits of the vaccines, careful not to break the fragile public trust that had finally developed around American medicine.
The Journal of the American Medical Association is cautious, setting a positive example that contrasts with the wild claims made elsewhere in the press. While it might seem like a medical journal would enthusiastically support real science like vaccines, the journal editors recognized the importance of public trust and so were careful about making unverifiable claims.
Themes
As it turns out, none of the medicines or vaccines being produced at the time could prevent influenza. Even the masks worn by many were unable to stop the disease—only isolation and preventing exposure to the virus were effective. While some places succeeded by isolating themselves, most places that attempted isolation weren’t strict enough to be effective.
The caution displayed earlier by the Journal of the American Medical Association is proven right in this passage. Though there was good science behind many of the measures described, it was hard to account for all the variables in the real world, and this could lead to unexpected results.
Themes
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In Alaska, the Inuit people were particularly hard hit and came close to extinction. Their communal style of living in small spaces made them especially vulnerable. Things in the northeast side of the continent were just as bad, with over a third of the people in Labrador dying.
Barry expands the scope of the book to look at other communities that were hard hit by the influenza pandemic. The situation of the Inuit helps demonstrate one of the key points of the pandemic: that people who lived close together were most vulnerable, even when they lived in remote areas.
Themes
People who lived or worked in tight quarters—like coal miners—were particularly at risk of dying from the virus. Worldwide, the virus killed over 10 percent of the population in many places, often disproportionately affecting marginalized people like Black Africans in South Africa. Only a handful of places with truly ruthless quarantines, like American Samoa (where not a single person died of influenza), were able to escape the pandemic.
This passage shows how socioeconomic issues played a role in the spread of the virus. As is the case with many crises, people at an economic disadvantage often suffered the worst effects (though the rich were not necessarily spared from the worst outcomes, either). The unusual case of American Samoa provides an example of the level of quarantine needed to be truly effective against a disease like the 1918 influenza virus.
Themes
Death rates in China were huge but mostly unknown. India was one of the hardest-hit countries in the world, with as many as 20 million people dying, possibly many more. Vaughan speculated that if the virus continued to accelerate, it could wipe out civilization in a matter of weeks.
Because many parts of the world didn’t keep accurate medical records at the time, some impacts of the influenza pandemic can only be estimated today. This illustrates how history is sometimes shaped not just by the events that happened but also by what records were left behind for future generations.
Themes
