The 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic infected a third of the planet’s population and killed an estimated 50 million people. The number of Americans who died of the Spanish flu was greater than the number of Americans killed in both World Wars. However, not all US cities suffered as badly as others. Research published in 2007 (at a time of heightened interest due to the avian flu outbreak) explored how cities across the US had responded in 1918, and the impacts this had had on mortality rates.
St Louis and Philadelphia provide good examples of how different approaches to public health led to radically differing outcomes. In Philadelphia, where the disease struck in September, authorities were slow to realise the threat posed by the virus, and allowed large public gatherings, including a citywide parade, involving 200,000 people in support of a World War I loan drive, to take place as planned. In four months, more than 12,000 Philadelphians died, an excess death rate of 719 people for every 100,000 inhabitants
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In St Louis, on the other hand, two weeks before Philadelphia officials began to react, the highly-experienced Health Commissioner, Dr. Max Starkloff, insisted that the city cancel all public gatherings, from football games to Halloween parties, close all schools for ten weeks, and even station police officers in department stores to keep people from lingering. St Louis made the mistake of reacting to an initial fall in cases by lifting controls, leading to a second wave of the illness; however controls were immediately reinstituted.
Excess deaths in St. Louis were 347 per 100,000 people, LESS THAN HALF the rate in Philadelphia. Early action appeared to have saved thousands of lives.
The 2007 studies used mathematical models to show that such large differences in death rates could be explained by the ways the cities carried out prevention measures, especially in their timing. Cities that instituted quarantine, closing schools and banning public gatherings and other such procedures early in the epidemic, had peak death rates 30 percent to 50 percent lower than those that did not.
A study examining the course of the epidemic in 23 cities across the US found that San Francisco, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Kansas City, Mo., had the most effective prevention programs, and time was of the essence. If restrictions were introduced too late or lifted too early, success rates declined substantially.