History leaped 103 years to repeat itself in grim parallels highlighting similarities between the 1918 global influenza outbreak and COVID-19 onslaught beginning a year ago.
From public officials’ initial efforts to downplay the outbreaks, to the mounting death tolls spurring desperate efforts to fight the pandemics, the influenza epidemic and COVID-19 did not discriminate in their deadly rampage.
By early October 1918, the Daily Evening Item had begun running an influenza victims list.
“James Umber Curtis, 30 years, 140 Humphrey street, Swampscott.
Mrs. Sophia Rodman, 22 years, 124 Shepard street.
Walter O. Poor, 37 years, 44 Cherry street.”
In a 1968 Item retrospective on the influenza outbreak, Item writer Jim Tagalakis recounted how the city’s health commissioner as late as Sept. 17, 1918 said flu or “grip” reports “did not constitute any cause for alarm.”
In a frightening parallel to March 2020, flu case reports were quickly supplemented by flu death reports. Five deaths reported on September 18 spiked to 11 on September 23.
Like national immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci, who found himself thrust into the controversial role of COVID-19 point person last spring, Lynn’s health commissioner Dr. Michael R. Donovan was bombarded with anxious questions as influenza gripped the city.
On the 24th, 10 deaths were reported in 24 hours and the Red Cross appealed for cots and bedding donations even as the city decided to “seize” a mansion atop the Highlands and use it as an emergency hospital.
In Saugus, volunteers mobilized by the Red Cross took risks similar to ones faced by COVID-19 frontline medical workers.
“Women are going into the home of the sick making beds, caring for whatever they can for the affiliated,” the Item reported.
A year ago this week, national and state officials hammered home COVID-19’s reality with announcements that schools, public gathering places, including restaurants, and many businesses needed to close immediately to stop the virus’ spread.
After delivering the startling news on September 24 that an estimated 10,000 city residents might have been exposed to the flu, Donovan issued a general alert to residents advising that ” …any signs of cold in the head or complaining of headache or chilliness… ” should confine people to their homes and send children to bed.”
Between September 24 and 25, the Item reported how 18 more local flu deaths were reported and 2,000 students were reported absent from local schools with the flu.
“Miss Lillian Barnard, 20 years, 787 Western avenue.
Miss Helena Laubner, 29 years, 99 Collins street.
Mrs. Nonie M. McGinty, 26 years, 22 Morris street.”
By Sept. 26, 1918, Lynn and cities across the Northeast were slowly shutting down with schools and theaters closed and ministers meeting to consider shuttering churches until the epidemic subsided.
The instantaneous isolation imposed by COVID-19 had its parallels to 1918. Telephones were a relatively new phenomenon for many Americians. The new technology relied on telephone exchanges staffed by operators who began contracting the flu.
The flu reached into local hospitals and killed the people working to keep others alive in a grim parallel to the risks faced last year by medical workers treating coronavirus victims.
“Miss Mary A. Spears … is the second nurse at (Lynn Hospital) to die of the disease since the epidemic started. Miss Spears gave her life to serve others, for she gave tender care to many afflicted ones before she was taken down as a victim of the epidemic,” mourned an Item story.
September ended with 21 more deaths and October began with the River Works reporting 2,260 employees out of work, nearly all of them with the flu. The 14,000-employee workforce typically recorded 300 people out sick on a day in 1918.
Lynn officials established a bureau for logging flu case reports and a Mutual Benefit Association coordinated multiple efforts to wage war against the epidemic.
Mayor Walter Creamer on October 3 announced schools and public gathering places would stay closed through October 14. Fifteen more Lynn residents died from the flu on October 7. Over the next three days, the death toll increased by 40 people.
Swampscott was tallying up influenza deaths on a daily basis and town organizations rallied to mobilize volunteers. Marblehead in early October reported a nurse shortage and Saugus officials warned: “Physicians in this town are pretty well exhausted and help is very much needed.”
But by the middle of October, precautions ranging from quickly identifying flu sufferers and confining them to bed and precautions against gatherings and assemblies started to reverse the flu’s deadly course in the city and across the country.
Tagalakis chronicled local school and theater reopenings on October 20. “Lynners were once more able to walk the streets and gather together without the fear of death stalking over them,” he wrote.
Influenza’s reign of terror lasted weeks while COVID-19’s spanned a year. But the flu still cut a deadly swath globally, killing an estimated 20 million people by mid-1919, including a half million Americans.
In Lynn, the death toll totaled 300. By contrast, COVID-19 killed 203 local residents as of March 19.
