“The only cloud in my sky is that the [School] Board will add the missed days on to the end of the term.” But as the reality of quarantine set in, Harris grew bored. Unable to leave home, she whiled away the hours by sewing a dress to wear to school when it reopened and experimenting with new recipes from the local paper, producing a particularly dreadful batch of fudge, half of which she ended up throwing out. Video: What 1918 tells us about flattening the curve (Newsy) It seems that the full weight of the crisis dawned on her only when she received the startling news that her best friend, Rena, was sick with the Spanish Flu. Reading through newspaper articles and diaries written during the 1918 influenza pandemic, I felt an eerie flash of recognition. The dark jokes, anxious gossip, and breathless speculation reminded me of scrolling through Twitter over the past few weeks, watching people wrestle with lifeunder quarantine by memeing through the crisis. Lacking the many communication technologies that have allowed us to stay in contact with friends and family, early-20th-century Americans also struggled with the sudden loss of strong community ties, an experience that, to many, even outweighed thefear of a deadly and contagious disease. As hospitals filled with patients and American cities went into lockdown, many people alternated between alarm and amusement, panicking about the pandemic one moment and joking about it the next. “People will look funny—like ghosts.” She drew doodles of peoplein face masks in the margins of her diary and pasted in an article about the latest face-mask fashions. “We were quarrentined [sic] on account of the Spanish Influenza and everyone is mad,” reads a letter written by a soldier stationed in South Carolina. In St. Louis, Health Commissioner Max Starkloffmade the controversial decision to order the closure of schools, movie theaters, bars, and—most devastatingly—public sporting events. “MEASURES OF THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT CAUSING THE TEAMS MUCH UNEASINESS.” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch dedicated articleafterarticle to thesubject: “QUARANTINE MAY LAST FOUR WEEKS; FOOTBALL SET BACK,” read one headline. But in certain places, as the death toll began to rise, a sense of desperation set in, resulting in dark consequences for human relationships. “It was almost like Don’t breathe in my face; don’t look at me and breathe in my face, because you may give me the germ thatI don’t want, and you never knew from day to day who was going to be next on the death list.” John M. Barry, the author of The Great Influenza, told me that feelings of loneliness during the pandemic were worsened by fear and mistrust, particularly in places where officials tried to hide the truth of the influenza from the public. “When you had nobody to turn to, you had only yourself.” In his book, Barry details reports of families starving to death because other people were too scared tobringthem food. As the disease stopped its spread,the public’s attention quickly shifted to the end of World War I, undermining the cathartic rituals that societies need to get past collective traumas. In cities where proactive public- health commissioners exhibited strong leadership, he argues in his book, people maintained faith in one another. Seattle Commissioner of Health J. S. McBride, for instance, rapidly imposed firm public-health measures and even volunteered his services at an emergency hospital. In November 1918, he commended Seattle residents for “their co-operation in observing the drastic, but necessary, orders which have been issued by us during the influenza epidemic.” McBride’s actions may havebeen what allowed Seattleites like Violet Harris to remember the epidemic as a somewhat boring time.
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