Charlotte Talks: This Is Not Our First Pandemic

 

Note: the full interview is available from WFAE.

 

A stay-at-home order is in place. Medical equipment is hard to find. There’s an illness causing flu-like symptoms, and it spreads easily. The year is 1918.

Today’s coronavirus is not the first time North Carolina has experienced a pandemic. Just over 100 years ago the so-called Spanish flu ravaged the globe, killing roughly 13,000 in North Carolina, 675,000 in the United States and 50 million worldwide.

Today we consider the surprising parallels of the two pandemics, 100 years apart.

Charlotte’s population was 1/20th of what it is today, and technology has since evolved in unimaginable ways. But the similarities are striking: Movie theaters are closed but grocery stores remain open, children are home from school and boredom is creeping in. Some are anxious to reopen the economy, while health officials are cautious. In perhaps a harbinger of things to come, in 1919 some businesses sued the local board of health for keeping them from making a profit.

What do we have to learn from the 1918 influenza? How might it inform our response to COVID-19?

In 2018, Dr. Lauren Austin cautioned at the end of her dissertation: “We are at once both wholly unprepared and ideally situated for another influenza outbreak.”

GUEST

Dr. Lauren Austin, author of “Afraid to Breathe: Understanding North Carolina’s Experience of the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic at the State, Local, and Individual Levels”