History is said to be cyclical. That until we learn from our mistakes, we will have to face the same problems, stumble on the same stone, over and over. Because every problem, although a source of anguish, is also an opportunity to correct our mistakes and grow.
In recent times, there is a story that returns from the past assuming particular relevance. It is much more than the story of a pandemic, it is the story of truth - or rather of the concealment of truth and its consequences. It is the story of half-truths, of indolence, of wanting to close your eyes or hide the sun with your finger. It is the story that confirms that "The worst truth costs only great pain, but the best lie costs many small annoyances and in the end enormous pain", as Jacinto Benavente wrote.
The past returns in the shoes of the coronavirus
It all began on March 4, 1918, when Albert Gitchel, a cook at Camp Fuston in Kansas, began to have cough, fever and headache. His was one of the first cases of the so-called Spanish flu. In just three weeks, 1,100 soldiers had already been hospitalized and thousands more had been infected.
However, since the United States had fully mobilized for the First World War, the authorities did not want to create panic, but decided to continue with the war plans. What began at first confined to army camps, where 25% of soldiers fell ill, later spread rapidly to the civilian population.
A doctor in a US Army camp wrote: “These men start with what appears to be a normal bout of bronchitis or flu, but when they are taken to the hospital, they very quickly develop the most vicious type of pneumonia I have ever seen… In a few hours death comes… It's horrible. You can bear to see one, two or twenty men die, but not see these poor devils fall like flies ... We have recorded an average of over 100 deaths a day ... We have lost a scandalous number of nurses and doctors. "
But the terrible experience the doctors were having in the field did not have an echo in society. In the rest of the warring countries, the press followed the game to politics, refraining from reporting the spread of the infection. In the United States, a law was even passed that punished with 20 years of imprisonment those found guilty of: "Speaking, printing, writing or publishing any language that is unfair, profane, scandalous or offensive to the United States government". This meant that a person could go to jail for simply criticizing the government, even if what they said was true, researchers at the Washington Institute of Medicine pointed out .
Philidelphia was the example of all that could be done wrong and the terrible cost of lies - or half-truths. Despite the fact that the flu had already started spreading to the city in mid-September, Wilmer Krusen, the then director of public health in Philadelphia, assured that there was nothing to worry about. He stated that "He would have limited this disease to its present limits" and that "We are sure we will succeed." When there were the first deaths, he downplayed them by saying it was "just the flu" or an "old flu", he said it wasn't Spanish flu in any way. Another city health official stated:"From now on, the disease will subside," according to the Smithsonian .
Since “nothing was happening,” the Liberty Loan parade scheduled for September 28th was held normally. This parade would have raised millions of dollars in war bonds. However, three days later the bill began to arrive for the long and crowded procession in which at least 200,000 people attended: Philadelphia's 31 hospitals collapsed and 2,600 people had died by the end of the week.
Other cities followed that modus operandi . While the mortality rate in one hospital alone reached nearly 40% in Chicago, people continued to flock to public transportation and health workers became infected because they could not take precautionary measures, the city's public health commissioner proclaimed: "The worry kills more people than the epidemic ”. That was the general political sentiment and reaction.
Fortunately, not all authorities reacted in the same way. St. Luis, for example, informed the population even before the first cases occurred in the city and as soon as they detected the first outbreak, they adopted isolation measures. As a result, weekly deaths in Philadelphia amounted to 748 per 100,000 inhabitants while in St. Louis there were only 358, less than half, as reported by National Geographic .
The problem was further compounded by the fact that “Several local health authorities refused to disclose the number of infected people and deaths. As a result, it was very difficult to assess the impact of the disease at that time ”, according to researchers from the University of Genoa . This made it impossible to make precise estimates at the epidemiological level and, of course, to adopt more effective measures to contain the infection and reduce the number of deaths.
Chronicle of an unannounced disaster
The main objective of this nonsense was to prevent the population from alarming as they already suffered many hardships caused by the First World War, as well as to keep morale high so that they could continue fighting.
Perhaps, after all, those rulers who had to make decisions for tens of thousands of other people thought that "it would not be so bad". They closed their eyes to the data and became deaf to the complaints of doctors with the secret illusion that it would all pass. But it was not so. Because closing your eyes on reality doesn't make it disappear. And sooner or later the consequences will hit us with all their hardness.
"The combination of strict control and contempt for truth had dangerous consequences," as historians pointed out. Ignoring the risk or putting other interests ahead of general health led to late and bad decisions. The lies, fabrications and downplaying of what was happening by many public officials who used the media to misinform, ended up destroying the credibility of the authorities.
The result was that there was a terrible disconnect and a lack of trust. People felt they had no one to turn to and trust. Later, when the containment measures went into effect, many ordinary citizens refused to pay attention to the experts, who had now lost all credibility because it had become impossible to distinguish between truth and lies.
Obviously, not informing the population well only served to postpone the alarm, which was triggered however when the news of the number of sick and deaths began to spread by word of mouth, when the deaths were no longer a cold, distant figure published in a newspaper. , but death itself knocked on the door of one's own house or that of a neighbor. That mismanagement, coupled with inadequate public health infrastructure and limited scientific knowledge of the time, ended up causing over 500 million infections worldwide and the deaths of over 50 million people.
The truth, if it is not complete, becomes an ally of the lie
Serenity and trust are the two blocks that prevent us from crossing the fine line between hard truth and alarmist panic. When you try to hide the truth under a fictitious and sweetened veil, serenity and trust turn into chaos and disbelief. And this is never good. Neither on a personal level, nor on a social level.
It is true that not all of us have the same psychological tools to face a difficult truth, but we all must have the opportunity to prepare ourselves in time to face that reality, in the best possible way. We need to go from initial shock to an adaptive state as soon as possible. But if we don't know what we are facing, we will go from one shock to another , never being able to reach that level of preparation that gives us the necessary balance to face the storm.
There is no doubt that in order to withstand an epidemic we need a continuous injection of optimism. We need to know that although things go wrong, they will get better at some point. Hope is what gives us the strength to keep fighting . But hope cannot be based on false illusions or compassionate lies because sooner or later it will turn into anger and frustration.
We also need concrete signals of what's going to happen - or what might happen. We need to prepare ourselves psychologically . Foreclosing this possibility - with the unforgivable excuse of protecting ourselves psychologically - makes no sense.
In moments of uncertainty, when there is no clear path, transparency and trust become our compasses. Taking them off can imply condemnation, literally and metaphorically. Because, as Lope de Vega used to say, “Nobody can get away from the truth without getting hurt”. And perhaps this is a lesson that some have forgotten.
Sources:
Martini, M. et. Al. (2019) The Spanish Influenza Pandemic: a lesson from history 100 years after 1918. J Prev Med Hyg; 60 (1): E64 – E67.
Aligne, CA (2016) Overcrowding and Mortality During the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. Am J Public Health; 106 (4): 642-644.
Stacey, L. et. Al. (2005) The Threat of Pandemic Influenza . Are We Ready? Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
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