In the Asian Flu of 1957-58, They Rejected Lockdowns

Jeffrey A. Tucker – January 12, 2021 Reading Time: 6 minutes

 

he 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............

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.”........................To Read More.....