{"id":89738,"date":"2020-03-27T21:02:05","date_gmt":"2020-03-28T03:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-lesson-from-the-spanish-influenza-outbreak-a-century-ago\/"},"modified":"2020-03-28T03:02:05","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T03:02:05","slug":"a-lesson-from-the-spanish-influenza-outbreak-a-century-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-lesson-from-the-spanish-influenza-outbreak-a-century-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"A lesson from the Spanish influenza outbreak a century ago"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"\"
Gary Markstein\/BCI Media<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Questioning the importance and effectiveness of social distancing? Look no further than the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918 for a moment in Southwest Colorado\u2019s past that should inform the present.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think social distancing is the single most important thing the average person can do,\u201d said Guy Walton, a retired nurse and co-author of the book \u201cMercy Hospital of the San Juans.\u201d \u201cJust like it was then.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1918, the biggest threat to the world\u2019s population was the Spanish flu as it spread rapidly from continent to continent, country to country. In all, the virus killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people globally.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s believed the disease found its way from Europe to Colorado in September 1918. By the next month, news reports at the time said the flu took its first known victim in Durango, an 8-year-old girl named Loisa Bass.<\/p>\n

\"Loisa
Loisa Bass was reported to be Durango\u2019s first victim of the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918. In 2019, a ceremony was held in Greenmount Cemetery to place a headstone on the 8-year-old\u2019s unmarked grave.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

In La Plata County, more than 200 people of a population of about 11,000 would succumb to the deadly virus, a mortality rate of about 1.8%, which in fact was below the worldwide average of 2.5%.<\/p>\n

One of the main reasons Durango saw less death, Walton said, was the community\u2019s ability to self-isolate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was devastating to the community and the businesses, but it did work,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>

Church services and schools were shut down. Public gatherings were prohibited. People who rode into town on the train were quarantined in hotels. And bars, the first businesses to close during the current coronavirus outbreak, were somewhat ironically the last holdouts to shutter their doors.<\/p>\n

Walton referenced a 1976 interview between Fort Lewis College professor Duane Smith and Bessie Finnegan, a nurse during the 1918 outbreak, who described the eerie feeling around downtown Durango.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should have seen it \u2026 There was nobody in the streets \u2026 The whole town was in mourning. Everything in town was shut down,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Efforts to abate the virus\u2019 spread appeared a success, and the flu seemed to have run its course by November, so when Germany surrendered through a treaty Nov. 11, ending World War I, residents took to the streets to celebrate.<\/p>\n

And from that day, now known as Armistice Day, forward, things started to go terribly wrong.<\/p>\n

Bev Rich with the San Juan Historical Society said people\u2019s impromptu block party in Silverton gave an opportunity for the virus to rapidly spread among the town\u2019s population. And it did, with catastrophic effects.<\/p>\n

Nearly 250 people of the town\u2019s 2,500 residents died \u2013 a death rate of 10%. By the end of the epidemic, Silverton had the highest flu mortality rate per capita in the entire country.<\/p>\n

Now, there are two mass graves in Silverton\u2019s cemetery.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlu victims were dying so quickly, they couldn\u2019t be buried,\u201d Rich said. \u201cThey were overwhelming the hospital and mortuary, and they didn\u2019t know if the bodies were contaminated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Two
Two Red Cross nurses ride the streets of Durango near the time of the Spanish influenza of 1918. Much like with the current coronavirus outbreak, residents in 1918 self-isolated to slow the spread of the deadly virus.<\/span>Courtesy of La Plata County Historical Society<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The town of Gunnison, with a population of about 1,300 people at the time, took a different course: an extreme lockdown.<\/p>\n

According to a recent report in The Guardian<\/em>, the town put up barricades, shut itself to outsiders, arrested those who disobeyed and went into a lockdown for four months.<\/p>\n

\u201cGunnison emerged from the pandemic\u2019s first two waves \u2013 by far the deadliest \u2013 without a single case,\u201d The Guardian<\/em> reported. \u201cIt was one of a handful of so-called \u2018escape communities\u2019 that researchers have analyzed for insights into containing the apparently uncontainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Small towns like Durango and Silverton that experience such deep trauma aren\u2019t quick to forget, even if it\u2019s more than 100 years after the fact.<\/p>\n

As the coronavirus spreads throughout the U.S., both Walton and Rich said there are important lessons to be learned from the 1918 flu \u2013 namely, the community must self-isolate in order to slow the spread of the virus and expose fewer people.<\/p>\n

In Silverton, for instance, the town recently enacted a shelter-in-place order that included a ban on unnecessary travel and visitors, going so far as to close access to public lands for backcountry skiers and snowmobilers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are not extreme measures in these extraordinary times, and we are not the first community to enact them,\u201d San Juan County Sheriff Bruce Conrad wrote in his order.<\/p>\n

Whereas the 1918 flu\u2019s mortality rate was 2.5%, the novel coronavirus\u2019 death rate is still being determined, but initial data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show a 10% to 27% death rate among people over 85 and a 3% to 11% rate for people 65 to 84.<\/p>\n

Measures have been taken in Durango and Silverton and across the state to limit human interaction and slow the spread, in an attempt to limit the death toll. But it\u2019s also just as important, Rich said, as the town of Silverton learned on the first Armistice Day, to not let the guard down too soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe now have learned a lesson from other pandemics, in that we know what we\u2019re supposed to do right now, and that\u2019s social distancing and being clean,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

1918 declaration (PDF)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

distancing made a difference in Southwest Colorado<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89741,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-89738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89738"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=89738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}