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Chapter 30
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
While Vaughan believed the influenza virus threatened civilization, in fact, many viruses depend on civilization to survive. Measles, for example, will die out once all the humans in a community get infected and become immune. Influenza, however, doesn’t need humans around, since it can survive in birds.
While previously, Barry has portrayed the pandemic as a war between humanity’s science and the virus’s force of nature, here he shows that the relationship is more complicated. A virus needs victims to survive, though what makes influenza particularly dangerous is that it doesn’t need humans.
Themes
Twenty years before the influenza pandemic, H.G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds, which involves aliens that temporarily take over the human race, only to be defeated by Earth’s infectious pathogens. Similarly, the suffering influenza caused would stop due to natural processes.
This passage is interesting because it flips the premise of War of the Worlds—instead of humans being protected from aliens by a virus, like in Wells’s novel, Barry implies that humans are the aliens threatened by a virus. Barry asks big questions about civilization, whether humans are the rulers of earth or just visitors at the mercy of nature.
Themes
One process that helped end the pandemic was immunity, which people acquired after being infected. Though immunity didn’t completely stop the virus from spreading, it did slow down its explosive pace. By the Armistice of 11 November 1918, the virus had already almost disappeared from Philadelphia.
The fact that the virus had largely disappeared in Philadelphia by November, after having first appeared in September, shows how rapidly it spread. Though Philadelphia residents were lucky the virus died out, the virus’s short duration caused a concentrated amount of devastation.
Themes
The other process that helped end the pandemic was the mathematical concept of “reversion to the mean.” Basically, because the 1918 influenza variant was so extreme in its virulence, and because influenza mutates so rapidly, it was only a matter of time before the variant mutated back to something with a lethality more like typical influenza.
Barry shows how basic concepts in statistics and probability can make up the foundation of exceedingly complex events like pandemics. Though the potential of viruses to mutate can be scary, Barry shows that some of these mutations actually benefit humans.
Themes
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Some claimed that conditions improved because army doctors at affected camps simply got better at treating influenza, but there’s no hard evidence for this. What is true, however, is that people struck later in the pandemic tended to become less ill. This was true both for residents in cities that were hit early and for whole cities (like on the West Coast) that were hit later.
People wanted to claim agency for stopping the pandemic, which is why some credited army doctors with improving their treatment efforts. The real truth—that the pandemic more likely ended due to sheer probability—was likely scary for many people, because it meant humanity was still at the mercy of nature’s whims.
Themes
By November, the virus had made its way around the world, and the second wave was more or less over, though the virus was not fully gone. The virus mutated again, and by December 11, there were still pockets of the U.S. with severe epidemics, even if things were much better overall. This third wave was still very lethal, just considerably less so than the second wave.
This passage, and the ones that follow, illustrate how the virus persisted even after the worst devastation had passed. In many ways, the course of the virus resembled the course of World War I, with effects felt around the world long after the deadliest moments had passed.
Themes
By early 1919, Australia was just about the only place in the world that had escaped the virus, largely due to rigorous quarantines of incoming ships. The virus did eventually escape from a ship of soldiers. Because the war was over, the newspapers were no longer censored, and so journalists wrote vividly of the virus’s devastation, even though Australia had a milder outbreak than the rest of the world. Survivors frequently compared their experiences to the Black Death.
The experience of Australia again illustrates the effectiveness of quarantine as a method of slowing a pandemic, but it also shows the need for total vigilance to that quarantine. As with Spain, the press in Australia exposed some uncomfortable truths about the virus that caused panic in the short-term. Barry seems to argue, however, despite the short-term shock of these newspaper articles, it was ultimately better to face the truth than to try to hide it.
Themes
Though the worst of the virus had passed, it still struck intermittently throughout spring 1919, and it remained powerful enough to do one last thing.
Though stories from history are sometimes told as contained events with satisfying conclusions, Barry shows here why such a neat approach to history can be too limited. The story of the pandemic does not have a simple ending, and its effects echo beyond its seeming end.
Themes
