My junior and senior years in high school were 1968 and 1969; five decades later, I can still remember some of the main events of that era: the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, the bombing of Cambodia, the Apollo 8 spaceflight that orbited the moon, and Woodstock, which I pleaded with my parents to let me attend.<\/p>\n
In my personal life, I remember playing on the basketball team, buying my first car, working in my family\u2019s corner grocery store and wishing I had the nerve to ask certain girls out on a date. Here\u2019s what I don\u2019t remember: the pandemic of 1968-1969.<\/p>\n
And yet there was one. It was called the H3N2 virus \u2014 less formally, the Hong Kong flu \u2014 and it took a significant toll.<\/p>\n
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 1 million people died worldwide, 100,000 in the US Conditions in large US cities sound similar to what they\u2019re going through now, with overwhelmed hospital workers, millions of people getting sick and the elderly most likely to die.<\/p>\n
When I first read about this pandemic, I could scarcely believe I had missed it.<\/p>\n
According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the virus wreaked havoc in Europe, with French manufacturers suffering severe disruptions and West German garbage collectors burying the dead because there weren\u2019t enough undertakers.<\/p>\n
In the US, the New York Times reported, the Citadel had to suspend classes because 165 cadets came down with the virus. Absenteeism in Los Angeles schools rose as high as 25%. In Boston, where I would soon be headed to college, university infirmaries were said to be filled with ill students. Tallulah Bankhead was a prominent victim of the virus.<\/p>\n
A quick search confirms that the Times had covered the pandemic at the time. But I didn\u2019t read the Times when I was in high school, and even if I had, I might well have missed the coverage. Every article was buried well inside the paper.<\/p>\n
I did read the Boston Globe, but it wasn\u2019t exactly trumpeting the news either. I found a humor piece by Art Buchwald (\u201cFor pretty young ladies, the HKF can be your protection from drunken bosses at Christmas parties\u201d). The news that the virus was officially an epidemic ran in a short wire-service article on Page 5.<\/p>\n
On New Year\u2019s Eve, the Globe predicted that the flu might keep people indoors. Or maybe not: \u201cFlu or not, there are many who won\u2019t let anything stand in the way of celebrating the holiday.\u201d<\/p>\n
From our current perspective, with shelter-in-place rules in much of the country, the most striking thing about the contemporaneous accounts was the absence of any discussion of lockdowns or even social distancing. I saw a few photos of nurses and office workers wearing masks, but that apparently wasn\u2019t mandated either.<\/p>\n
Even the occasional school closings were one-offs; not a single state ordered that schools or businesses be closed en masse. The virus swept across the world, causing tens of millions of people to become sick \u2014 and killing nearly three times the number of people who have died so far of Covid-19 \u2014 and the world\u2019s chief mitigation effort was to race to make a vaccine. By the time one was ready, the pandemic had largely fizzled out.<\/p>\n
This pandemic, of course, will be indelibly seared in the memory of those who lived through it. It is the biggest story since 9\/11, with the ever-rising number of cases and deaths dominating the news. Children who are now wearing masks, doing schoolwork online and staying indoors will never forget it.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll also no doubt remember the economic aftermath, which is likely to be horrific, with deflation and even a depression a possibility. On Tuesday, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that \u201cthere is a risk of permanent damage\u201d to the economy if the country remained locked down much longer.<\/p>\n
All of which raises a question that has so far been relegated to a small handful of coronavirus contrarians: with all the businesses that are going to fail, and the tens of millions of people who will be unemployed \u2014 and the other negative consequences that come with forcing people to stay at home \u2014 will the lockdown have been worth it? Or would we have been better off doing something closer to what the country did in 1968 \u2014 yes, taking precautions like wearing masks, washing hands and protecting the elderly, but allowing businesses and schools to stay open while people went about their lives?<\/p>\n
There are two issues here. The first is that quarantining an entire population is not some set-in-stone technique that has been used for decades to stem the spread of a virus. It was first proposed in 2006 by two government doctors \u2014 neither of them infectious disease specialists \u2014 after President George W. Bush asked for a plan to combat pandemics.<\/p>\n
Soon afterward, a paper was published calling for a national policy of sheltering-in-place. It swayed Bush. But four scientists who were infectious disease specialists also wrote a paper about the idea \u2014 a devastating critique.<\/p>\n
There was no science to support the notion that a national quarantine would halt the spread of infection, they wrote. It could increase the risk of infection for people living in close quarters.<\/p>\n
Closing theaters, malls, restaurants, stores and bars \u2014 not to mention church services and athletic events \u2014 would have \u201cserious disruptive consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n
Closing schools was not only impractical \u201cbut carries the possibility of a seriously adverse outcome.\u201d And so on.<\/p>\n
The scientists concluded:<\/p>\n
Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.<\/p>\n
The second issue is that there is surprisingly little evidence that lockdowns work. Last week, a statistician named William M. Briggs, who is solidly in the anti-lockdown camp, wrote a blog post comparing countries that locked down with countries that didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
As of May 12, the US had 237 deaths per million people. Taiwan, a no-lockdown country, had 0.3 deaths per million. (The country has had a total of seven deaths.)<\/p>\n
No-lockdown Sweden has had 347 deaths per million; lockdown Belgium, with a similar population, has had 763 deaths per million. Ethiopia, with a population of 109 million, had no lockdown \u2014 and a death rate of 0.04 per million.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeath rates were more than highly variable; they were all over the place,\u201d Briggs wrote of the data he had collected. \u201cIf lockdowns worked as advertised, we would not see such enormous variability in the death rates.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat should we conclude?\u201d he added. \u201cStrike that. What can we conclude? Only one thing: We cannot conclude that lockdowns worked.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let me point out one other fact about the pandemic of the late 1960s. Like many coronaviruses, the H3N2 virus came in waves. The last one began in the fall of 1969 and ended in early 1970.<\/p>\n
Assuming this coronavirus fades in the summer, there is a high likelihood that it will return with a vengeance in the fall and winter. If that happens, are you truly ready to lock down again?<\/p>\n