Jeffrey A. Tucker
– January 12, 2021 @ American Institute for Economic Research
The Asian flu of 1957-58
was a deadly pandemic with a broader reach for severe outcomes than
Covid-19 of 2020. It killed between 1 and 4 million people worldwide,
and 116,000 in the US in a time with half the population. It was a
leading contributor to a year in which the US saw 62,000 excess deaths.
Globally, it might have been five times as deadly as Covid-19, as measured by deaths per capita. It was unusually lethal
for younger people: 40 percent of deaths had occurred among people
younger than 65, whereas the average age of death Covid-19 is 80 with
only 10-20% of deaths under the age of 65.
What’s striking is how public health officials handled the pandemic.
It had a diametrically opposite response than policymakers pursued in
2020. One might assume that this was due to negligence and a lack of
sophistication in understanding the need to lockdown. Surely they didn’t
know 65 years ago what we know today!
Actually, this is completely false. Public health experts did in fact
consider school closures, business closures, and a ban of public events
but the entire ethos of the profession rejected them. There were two
grounds for this rejection: lockdowns would be too disruptive, disabling
the capacity of medical professionals to deal competently with the
crisis, and also because such policies would be futile because the virus
was already here and spreading.
Whereas lockdowns in the Covid-19 case might have contributed to a
lengthening of the crisis by delaying herd immunity, the period in which
the Asian flu had the most severe consequences was only three months.
Newspapers barely covered it and most people did not notice it.
Histories of the period hardly mention it whereas the early history of
2020 will talk primarily about the virus and the lockdowns. This is due
not to the pandemic but to the brutal pandemic policy response.
The best single article
on the 1957-58 Asian flu policy response is “Public Health and Medical
Responses to the 1957-58 Influenza Pandemic” by the great epidemiologist
Donald A. Henderson and others among his colleagues at Johns Hopkins.
It appeared in 2009 in the journal Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science. It is embedded at the end of this article.
The article is crucially important because it proves that not locking
down was a deliberate decision, not some kind of failure. The refusal
to disrupt society and constrain freedom in the presence of a pathogen
was an achievement of modern ideas of public health. From the ancient
world through the 19th century, the typical response to disease was to
attribute it to corrupt air and to run away while demonizing and
excluding the sick. Modern medical advances – with the discovery of
viruses and bacteria, antibiotics, antiviral therapeutics, and the
workings of the human immune system – counseled community calm and
doctor-patient relationships.
The most influential public health body at the time was the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers (ASTHO).
They met on August 27, 1957. They concluded that they should recommend
home care as much as possible to keep the hospitals from overcrowding.
They would instruct people to seek medical attention if symptoms become
severe.
Otherwise, ASTHO concluded as follows: ‘‘there is no practical
advantage in the closing of schools or the curtailment of public
gatherings as it relates to the spread of this disease.’’
In particular, schools were not closed because public health experts
observed that the children would just pick up the virus elsewhere. “The
Nassau County Health Commissioner in New York,” observes Henderson,
“stated that ‘public schools should stay open even in an epidemic’ and
that ‘children would get sick just as easily out of school.’”
We’ve heard incessantly that Covid-19 necessitated lockdowns because
it is a new strain for which there was not a vaccine. Well, the Asian
flu was already new and there was no vaccine either. By the time one
came along, it was only 60% effective and not widely used. Henderson
comments: “it is apparent that vaccine had no appreciable effect on the
trend of the pandemic.”
Perhaps we had to lock down due to asymptomatic cases? Not true.
Henderson notes of the Asian flu: “Attack rates in the schools ranged
from 40% to 60%. Serological surveys revealed that half of those
reporting no influenza illness showed serological evidence of
infection.”
To be sure there were disruptions. They happened not by force but by
necessity due to absenteeism. They were short-lived. The millions of
people exposed to the virus developed antibodies and moved on. This was
true of schoolchildren in particular:
“School absenteeism reached its
maximum with 280,000 absences on October 7. This amounted to 29% of all
school attendees. The highest rate was registered for Manhattan schools,
which had an overall 43% absentee rate. That day, 4,642 teachers (11%)
did not report to work due to being sick. Business establishments,
however, reported no significant increase in absenteeism. Within 2 weeks after the peak, school absentee rates were almost back to normal—around 7%.”
Newspaper reports at the time offer no record of widespread public
event cancellations much less forced closures. Sometimes college and
high school football games were postponed due to illness absences. Some
conventions were cancelled by organizers. But that is all.
The New York Times’s single editorial on the Asian flu
reflected public health wisdom: “Let us all keep a cool head about Asian
influenza as the statistics on the spread and the virulence of the
disease begin to accumulate.”
Henderson concludes as follows:
The 1957-58 pandemic was such a
rapidly spreading disease that it became quickly apparent to U.S. health
officials that efforts to stop or slow its spread were futile. Thus, no
efforts were made to quarantine individuals or groups, and a deliberate
decision was made not to cancel or postpone large meetings such as
conferences, church gatherings, or athletic events for the purpose of
reducing transmission.
No attempt was made to limit travel or to
otherwise screen travelers. Emphasis was placed on providing medical
care to those who were afflicted and on sustaining the continued
functioning of community and health services. The febrile, respiratory
illness brought large numbers of patients to clinics, doctors’ offices,
and emergency rooms, but a relatively small percentage of those infected
required hospitalization.
School absenteeism due to influenza was
high, but schools were not closed unless the number of students or
teachers fell to sufficiently low numbers to warrant closure. However,
the course of the outbreak in schools was relatively brief, and many
could readily return to activities within 3 to 5 days. A significant
number of healthcare workers were said to have been afflicted with
influenza, but reports indicate that hospitals were able to adjust
appropriately to cope with the patient loads.
Available data on
industrial absenteeism indicate that the rates were low and that there
was no interruption of essential services or production. The overall
impact on GDP was negligible and likely within the range of normal
economic variation.
Health officers had hopes that significant
supplies of vaccine might become available in due time, and special
efforts were made to speed the production of vaccine, but the quantities
that became available were too late to affect the impact of the
epidemic. The national spread of the disease was so rapid that within 3
months it had swept throughout the country and had largely disappeared.
One reads this detailed account of how public health responded then
compared to now and the response is to weep. How could this have
happened to us? We knew for sure that lockdowns were terrible public
health. We’ve known it for 100 years.
Shutting down an economy flatly contradicts a founding principle of
the World Health Organization: “Economic development and public health
are inseparable and complementary… the social, cultural and economic
development of a community, and its state of health, are
interdependent.”
In 1957-58, public health officials took that observation seriously.
This very serious flu came and went with minimal social and economic
disruption. Immune systems in the US and around the world adapted to the
new strain of the flu.
Then ten years later, a new mutation of this flu arrived.
Public health responded the same way, with wisdom, calm, and no
interventions in people’s rights and liberties. Social and economic
functioning were rightly seen as crucial to a comprehensive view of
public health.
Lockdowns were ruled out in the past precisely so that the damage of a
pandemic would be minimized and we could get through it more quickly.
This was the science. This was the science all the way through the
spring of 2020, when everything changed. Suddenly the “science” favored
forgetting everything we’ve learned from the past and replacing it with
brutal policies that wrecked the economy and people’s lives, while achieving nothing in terms of minimizing pandemic damage.
We had foisted on us an entirely new vocabulary designed to disguise
what was being done to us. We weren’t under house arrest, our businesses
smashed, the schools shuttered, live arts and sports abolished, our
travel plans wrecked, and forcibly separated from loved ones. No, we
were merely experiencing “disease mitigation” through “targeted layered
containment,” “nonpharmaceutical interventions,” and “social
distancing.”
This is all Orwellian with traditional public health wisdom having
been tossed down the memory hole. The actual science did not change.
Traditional public health implores us
to consider not just one pathogen but all variables that impact health,
not just in the short run but in the long run too. So it was and so it
is today.
Public Health and Medical Responses to the 1957 - 1958 Influenza Pandemic Page 1 / 10 Zoom 100% (Editor's Note: Go to the original post to see this as I can't reproduce it. RK)
Jeffrey A. Tucker is an independent
editorial consultant who served as Editorial Director for the American
Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of
articles in the scholarly and popular press and eight books in 5
languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.
Jeffrey is available for speaking and interviews via his email. Tw | FB | LinkedIn
