Mindless Enemies

Good information is the key to winningany battle. As the saying goes, “Know your

enemy!” When germs cause dis-ease, of course we treat them as

enemies. After all, a pandemicdisease such as Covid-19 cansicken, injure, or kill millionsof people. But here’s some-thing else scary that we’velearned about germs: theydon’t know they’re the enemy.They don’t want to harm us.They don’t want anythingbecause they don’t have brains.They don’t even know they exist.

Many diseases are caused by twodifferent kinds of germs: bacteriaand viruses. Bacteria are incredibly tiny single-celled organisms. Most are difficult to see evenunder a powerful microscope. Nevertheless,bacteria are living things. They grow, repro-duce, take in energy from their environment,and produce waste.

Viruses are much smaller and simpler even

than bacteria. Viruses are so simple thatscientists aren’t even sure if they count as

living things. A virus is just a packageof genetic instructions (DNA or

RNA), sometimes wrappedinside a fatty outer layer.Viruses can’t reproduce or doanything much on their own.However, if a virus’ geneticinstructions get inside thecells of another living thing,

they can force those cells tomake copies of that virus.

Neither bacteria nor virusescan think. (Imaginary zombies

would be geniuses compared to reallife germs.) But germs have evolved todo one thing really well: multiply insuitable environments. A human bodyisn’t the enemy for germs; it’s a habitatwhere some germs can multiply likecrazy. That’s a problem, at least forus. Multiplying germs can sickenand kill their host.

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PUBLISHER ANDEDITOR IN CHIEFPat LinseCO-PUBLISHERMichael Shermer

EDITOR AND WRITERDaniel Loxton

CONTRIBUTORS:Pat Linseis the creator ofand Editor in Chiefof JUNIOR SKEPTIC.She wrote manyof the early issues.

Daniel Loxtonis the Editor ofJUNIOR SKEPTIC,and writes andillustrates mostissues. Daniel isthe author ofEvolution: How Weand All LivingThings Came to Be.

This Issue’s Coverfeatures a digitalpainting by DanielLoxton, with thanksto Cal and Karla K.

Hello!

Let’s find out!

Today we’ll confront one of humanity’s scariest enemies:epidemic disease. Are we brave enough to face this horror? Youbet we are! We’ve done it every day during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Covid is new. Other diseases have plagued our ancestors sinceancient times. Mighty civilizations have been devastated by the

invisible invaders we call “germs.” But people are not helpless! Overcenturies, we learned how to fight back against disease. Our

strongest weapons are science and critical thinking. However, germshave a powerful ally: misinformation! How do ignorance and bad

ideas help the germs win—and what can we do about that?

Illustration

of bacteria

Copyright © 2020 byMillennium Press, Inc.and its contributors.All rights arereserved.Reproduction inwhole or in partwithout permissionof the publisher isprohibited. ContactDaniel Loxton atjuniorskeptic@skeptic.com

Image by Jennifer O

osthuizen, courtesy of the CDC

We can’t see germs, but they’re all around us, all the time.We live in a soup of microscopic life. There are countlessbacteria and viruses on the surfaces we touch and in the airwe breathe. Bacteria live on our skin and inside our bodies.

Most of those microbes are not harmful to us. Some areeven helpful. When harmful germs do enter our bodies, ourimmune system is amazingly good at stopping them.

However, germs change over time. They mutate andevolve. Sometimes germs evolve new ways to infect humanhosts and get past our immune defenses. That can be serioustrouble. New strains of harmful germs can cause dangerousnew diseases. That’s what happened in 2019 with the newcoronavirus that causes Covid-19. A virus that previouslylived inside another kind of animal evolved a new ability toinfect humans. A new plague was born.

Evolving Plagues

It was difficult for deadly plagues to spread during prehis-toric times because people lived in small, isolated groups.Germs could only spread if infected people lived longenough to infect others. A new germ that killed everyone inan isolated tribe would run out of hosts and become extinct.

Germs that kill quickly have to spread even faster. Thisbecame possible when ancient people began to live togetherin cities. Deadly germs could evolve in places with densepopulations. The germs could survive by quickly spreadingfrom host to host.

Ancient societies suffered wave after wave of deadly epi-demics. Each new disease was as mysterious as it was terrify-ing. People had no immunity to new diseases, no medicinesthat could help, and no good explanations for these disasters.Science hadn’t been invented. No one knew that germs exist-ed. Ancient people had almost none of the information theyneeded to protect themselves or fight back against disease.

We can only imagine the plagues that struck before writ-ing was invented. One of those early plagues may have beensmallpox. When people began to farm animals, they becameexposed to the viruses those animals carried. Smallpox wasprobably a cow virus that mutated to infect humans. Victimssuffered from fever and horrible blisters across the face andbody. About a third of them died. Smallpox probably killed aPharoah of Egypt about three thousand years ago. His mum-mified body appears to be covered in smallpox blisters.

Epidemics were a terrifying fact of life for ancient people.When an unknown plague struck Mesopotamia around 3,700years ago, the people called it “devouring by the god.” Weknow from letters written on clay tablets that they believedthe disease was a divine punishment. They imagined that theland was “touched” by the vengeful hand of an angry god.

However, they did understand one critical fact: people whowere “full of the punishment of the god” could spread thecurse to other people. To prevent this spread, authorities saidthat people from “touched” areas must not enter untouchedtowns. Sick people were to be isolated in quarantine.Healthy people should not get close to sick people or touchtheir belongings.

The Plague of Athens

A dozen centuries later, the ancient Greek city stateAthens was one of the jewels of the world. Athens waswealthy, powerful, and sophisticated. The Athenians invent-ed a radical new system of government—democracy. Theyhad some of the world’s best sculptors, playwrights, andphilosophers, all protected by the region’s mightiest navy.

Then disaster struck. Around 2,450 years ago, war brokeout between Athens and its rival, Sparta. When the power-ful Spartan army invaded the lands controlled by Athens,people from the countryside fled inside Athens’ city walls.Instead of safety, these refugees found only catastrophe.

The overcrowded city was struck by a deadly plague. Thiswas a disaster “beyond description,” said the historianThucydides, who caught and recovered from the disease.Patients burned with fever, suffered uncontrollable cough-ing and vomiting, and died by the thousands. The epidemickilled around a third of the city. Even their leader died.

Neither doctors nor “any other human skill” did anygood. Doctors caught the disease from their patients. Peoplewho tried to care for sick loved ones “caught the infection”and “died like sheep.” The “disease carried off all alike”—strong and weak, good and bad, rich and poor.

Society broke down. “Corpses and the dying lay one uponthe other and half-dead people reeled about in the streets,”Thucydides wrote. People felt utterly doomed. They nolonger cared about honor, customs, or even the law, because“no one expected that he would live to be brought to trialand punished.” Some begged the Greek gods for help.Others saw that prayers were useless. They decided to usetheir final days to “live for pleasure and to enjoy themselvesquickly.”

In the midst of disaster, good information helped. Forexample, the Athenians noticed that the “disease did notattack the same person twice, at least not fatally.” Thismeant that recovered people could safely tend to the sick.

Bad information made things worse. Rumors claimedthat their Spartan enemies caused the disease by poisoningthe water supply. Those who believed this was the end ofthe world took unsafe chances, broke laws, and failed towork together. That surely cost lives. Others mistakenlybelieved that those who recovered from the plague becameimmune to all diseases. This false sense of protection putthem in greater danger from other diseases.

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Athens never completely recovered from its devastatingplague. The Athenians lost the war against Sparta and muchof their power. In the centuries since, many great empireshave learned the same hard lesson: a plague can suddenlycripple the most powerful nations.

The Antonine Plague Slams the Roman Empire

Six centuries after the Plague of Athens, the RomanEmpire was at the height of its power. The empirewas vast and wealthy. It was the mightiest militarypower on the planet. Romans believed they werethe world’s greatest civilization, with the bestart, culture, laws, monuments, and roads. Theyhad a wise Emperor, Marcus Aurelius.

The empire seemed almost invincible. But itwasn’t. In the year 166, a plague broke outamong the soldiers of the Roman Legions. Thisdeadly disease soon raged throughout the empireand spread beyond, becoming a “pandemic” (anepidemic that spreads to many countries). Theempire struggled with wave after wave of infectionsover several years.

Many historians suspect that the disease was smallpoxbecause it caused blisters on the skin. What’s certain is thatit was terrifyingly lethal. Millions of Romans died, rich andpoor alike. One Roman wrote that there were so many bod-ies that they “were removed in carts and wagons.” Anotherestimated that 2,000 people died every day in the city ofRome at the peak of the epidemic.

The army was so badly weakened that the Emperor hadto turn slaves, gladiators, and even bandits into soldiers. Heordered the government to pay to bury the countless dead.To raise money and boost public morale, he auctioned offthe fine furnishings and valuables from his palace.

Doctors and leaders rushed to learn more about the dis-ease and hold society together. As always, missing and falseinformation cost money and lives. Rumors once again saidthis new plague was a punishment from the gods. Theempire invested fortunes into temples and religious cere-monies. This did nothing to help.

Worse, scam artists took advantage of people’s terror.Sadly, this is typical. During times of plague, fakers makemoney selling bogus cures and useless protections againstthe disease. In this case, a scammer named Alexander ofAbonoteichus sold a supposedly magical verse to be hung onpeople’s doors. Alexander claimed that this useless charmwould protect homes from the plague. It actually did theopposite. As a skeptic named Lucian of Samosata explained,“people put too much confidence in the verse, and livedcarelessly”—making them more likely to die.

The Roman Empire never fully recovered the peace,power, and prosperity it enjoyed before these crushing pan-demic years. This plague was the beginning of centuries ofdecline. Eventually the empire broke apart.

The First Bubonic Plague Pandemic

Four centuries later, the remains of the Roman Empirelived on as the Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire. TheByzantine Empire was strong under the Emperor Justinian.That strength was about to be badly tested by a horrifying

new pandemic disease: bubonic plague.

“Justinian’s Plague” erupted across the ByzantineEmpire as a completely unknown new disease.

Witnesses described a “pestilence, by which thewhole human race came near to being annihi-lated.” Infected people developed fevers, andthen huge and painful lumps in their neck,armpits, or groin. (These swollen “buboes” arewhy the disease is called “bubonic” plague.) The

terrifying epidemic “spread over the wholeworld, always moving forward,” killing millions.

“Some cities were so severely afflicted as to be alto-gether depopulated,” said one man who caught the

plague himself. He recovered, but lost “several of my chil-dren, my wife, and many of my kin” to the killer disease. InConstantinople, the empire’s capital city, thousands diedevery day at the peak of the initial outbreak. Around 40 per-cent of the city’s population died in a four month period.

The disaster was so huge and frightening that it seemedlike the end of the world. People thought it could only bedivine punishment—the “wine-press of God’s wrath” crush-ing all humanity at once.

However, there were problems with the divine punish-ment theory. First, it was only a guess. If it was a punish-ment, why was humanity being punished? Also, why didn’tprayers or religious ceremonies seem to help? People diedanyway. Most troubling, the disease killed people of everyreligion. It took good people and bad. Why would God pun-ish the purest hearts just as harshly as the most wicked?

Islamic thinkers puzzled over that religious mystery as theplague raged across Muslim countries. If the plague wasGod’s will, they reasoned, it must be a sin to fight or fleefrom it. They decided the plague was a punishment for otherpeople, but a blessing for Muslims who would go straight toheaven. This dangerous guesswork put Muslim lives at risk.

Bubonic plague shattered societies across half the world—and then it came back to do it again and again. European civ-ilization was changed forever. It was the beginning of themedieval period (which has sometimes been called the“Dark Ages”). The plague couldn’t be stopped because thekey facts were completely unknown. This plague was notspread from person to person. It was spread by rats and fleas.

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Empires and Epidemics

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The medieval pandemic known as the “Black Death” may bethe most devastating disaster in human history. “The bestestimate is that from 1349 to 1450 European populationdeclined between 60% and75%” from repeated waves ofbubonic plague, writes histori-an Robert Gottfried in hisbook The Black Death.

Medieval society had beenrelatively stable for a few cen-turies before the Black Death.Kings ruled, knights enforcedthe peace, and peasants toiledin the fields. Harvests wereoften good. Europe’s popula-tion grew. However, this stable period did not last. The cli-mate changed for the worse. Harvests failed more often.There was starvation in many places.

Then the plague hit like a tsunami smashing throughmedieval society. It started in Asia and spread west. It arrivedin Constantinople in 1347. It spread to Egypt, through theMuslim Middle East, and into Africa. Ships full of dyingsailors brought the plague to Italy.

The disease was so lethal that society broke down com-pletely. Witnesses were overwhelmed by the horror of whatthey saw. As one Italian witness wrote, “almost everyonebecame stupefied seeing the pain. It is impossible for thehuman tongue to recount the awful truth.” So many died soquickly that “none could be found to bury the dead formoney or friendship.” Instead, “great pits were dug and pileddeep with the multitude of dead.” As people “died by thehundreds, both day and night,” anguished families “brought

their dead to a ditch as best they could” without help fromanyone. “And as soon as those ditches were filled, morewere dug.” This witness recalled in despair that he “buriedmy five children with my own hands. ... And so many diedthat all believed it was the end of the world.” With countlessbodies littering the streets, “a dead man was then of no

more account than a deadgoat,” said another witness.

All normal businessstopped. Streets emptied.Rich nobles and “cowardlypriests” fled the cities, leav-ing mansions and churchesempty and unguarded.Others huddled at homeuntil they too sickened anddied. “The houses of the deadstood open, with all the jew-

els, money and treasures in full view, and if someone want-ed to enter there was nothing to stop them,” wrote anotherwitness. There was no rule of law, “for the plague struck sosuddenly that at first there weren’t enough officials andthen there were none at all.”

There was widespread panic. Many simply fled. “Fatherabandoned child, wife husband, one brother another,”recalled a witness. Believing that all were doomed, othersdecided to party until the end, with “singing and free livingand gratification of the appetite in every possible way…Day and night they went from one tavern to another, drink-ing and carousing unrestrainedly.”

As the plague spread, scenes of similar death, horror, andsocial breakdown unfolded everywhere. Around a third ofthe people in Europe died over five years. In some places,the death toll reached 50 or even 70 percent.

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Scientific Facts about Bubonic Plague

The cause of the plague remained a mystery for over onethousand years. It took modern science to solve that mystery.Today we know that bubonic plague is caused by a species ofbacteria. This bacteria lives naturally in animals such as rats.Under some conditions, the bacteria will kill its animalhosts. When that happens, the fleas that live on thoseanimals begin to starve. The fleas then jump off insearch of blood from some other living animal.

When infected rats live in towns and cities, theirfleas may bite human beings.Unfortunately, a rat flea’s bite cantransmit the plague bacteria topeople, causing disease. This still hap-pens even today, because bubonic plague still

exists in animals. Thankfully, we can now cure plague withmodern antibiotics. Before antibiotics, 50–60 percent ofinfected people would die.

Bubonic plague does not easilyspread from person to person. Usually

it is spread by insect bites. In rarecases, however, the bacteria can build upin the lungs so that infected people can

spread the disease when they cough. Suchcases of “pneumonic” plague are almost

always fatal.

Unfortunately, medieval people had noneof that information. Without it, they were

defenseless when a second great bubonic plaguepandemic exploded across the world in the 1300s.

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The Black Death took time to spread across Europe. Manyplaces had warning and tried to prepare. Cities organizedhealth boards to protect public safety.

Medieval people believed that unclean conditions created“bad air” that could make people sick. They were half right.Medieval streets were filthy with garbageand sewage. This filth could spread dis-eases such as cholera and typhoid feverby contaminating food and water.

People also had experience with a skindisease called leprosy. Leprosy causeshorrible skin sores that eat away victims’fingers, toes, and faces. People knew thatleprosy was contagious. They isolated lep-rosy victims in “leper colonies” so theywould not infect others.

Authorities tried to stop the plagueusing the best knowledge available. Theycleaned streets, imposed quarantines onships, and turned sick people away fromthe city gates. These were smart precau-tions that would have worked againstother diseases. However, “Neither knowl-edge nor human foresight” stopped theplague from invading city after city. Forexample, the wealthy Italian city ofVenice quarantined ships and isolatedplague victims. Nevertheless, around 60percent of Venetians died during theheight of the plague.

Unfortunately, these measures couldnot stop the rats and fleas that spread theplague. Infected rats climbed down theropes of quarantined ships, slippedunseen into locked down cities, and car-ried fleas into socially distanced homes.

Attempted Explanations

No one even suspected the true causeof the plague. The best medical authori-ties in Paris reported that the “cause ofthis pestilence was…the configuration ofthe heavens.” They claimed that a “deadlycorruption of the air” was created by a “conjunction of threeplanets in Aquarius.” They also suggested “the escape of therottenness trapped in the center of the earth as a result ofearthquakes” as another possible cause. These pseudoscien-tific explanations were as wrong as they were useless.

As in past epidemics, most people believed that the BlackDeath was a punishment from God. They prayed for mercy

and held countless religious ceremonies. An extreme reli-gious movement even tried to calm God’s rage by strippingoff their shirts and whipping themselves bloody in publicsquares. These “flagellants” were popular at first, but theirmovement lost support as the plague continued to spread.

Deadly Misinformation

Tragically, there was one other popular explanation forthe disaster. Widespread rumors claimedthat evil forces created the plague on pur-pose by poisoning the water supply. Theserumors led to history’s most horrifyingexample of the danger of misinformationduring times of plague.

There were Jewish communities inmany towns and cities across Europe.Because of they practiced their own reli-gion, Jews were distrusted and mistreatedby their Christian neighbors. When the

plague began, that distrust turneddeadly. False rumors spread the “strongsuspicion” that the Jews “planned todestroy the Christians by means of poi-son, and that they had secretly put poi-son into wells, springs, and rivers sothat Christians would drink it.”

In 1349 “Jews were seized and put inchains and into prison everywhere, in allthe places where they dwelt.” Many weretortured until they “confessed” to imagi-nary crimes. (A person will say anythingto stop the pain of torture.) These fakeconfessions claimed that every “Jew abovethe age of seven” was part of vast poison-ing conspiracy. These absurd accusationsturned fear of the plague into murderousrage against the Jews:

Accordingly the whole world brutallyrose against them, and in Germanyand in other countries which hadJewish communities many thousandswere indiscriminately butchered,slaughtered and burnt alive by theChristians.

Hundreds of Jewish communitieswere wiped out by savage mobs. Other Christians realizedthat it was a mistake to blame the Jews for the plague. Asone pointed out, no poisoning plot could have caused “sogreat a plague or killed so many people.” Also, Jews andChristians drank the same water. The Pope demanded thatthe violence be stopped. He argued that “it cannot be true”that Jews caused the plague because “the Jews themselvesand many other races” also suffered from the plague.

Fighting the Plague

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Imagined

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Massacre of Jews

Flagellants

There were many more waves of deadly bubonic plague. TheBlack Death returned just 10 years later, killing around 20percent of the population, and then again a few years afterthat. Waves of plague continued for centuries.

Even after the rise of science and the discovery of bacteria,missing facts and wrong ideas made epidemics worse. Whenbubonic plague broke out in British-ruled India in 1896, thegovernment sent search parties door to door. Infected peoplewere isolated in hospitals. Everything was sanitized. In thecity of Bombay (now Mumbai), sewers were flushed cleanevery day with three million gallons of disinfectant and seawater. Two years later, science finally discovered that rat fleastransmit the plague bacteria. Flushing the sewers forcedinfected rats above ground and into people’s homes!

The British also failed to convince the people that theirmeasures were necessary. People didn’t like being stripsearched by soldiers, or isolated in hospitals to die. Theybegan to hide infected family members. Violent riots brokeout in protest against the harsh measures.

Fighting Smallpox on American Soil

Health authorities need two things to fight an epidemic:accurate information, and a trustworthy way to share thatinformation with the public. We’ll see that American healthauthorities have not always gotten these two things right.

While India was still fighting the plague, humanity’s oldenemy smallpox returned to the United States. When caseswere detected in New York in 1900, health authoritiesdeclared, “We are not afraid of smallpox.” They felt confidentbecause science had learned how to stop smallpox: isolatesick people, and then vaccinate everyone around them.

That highly effective strategy began a thousand years earli-er. People in ancient China and India noticed that no onecaught smallpox twice. Those who recovered were immunefor life. This observation led to a technique called inocula-tion. Smallpox blisters were ground up and either blown uppeople’s noses or scratched into their skin. This usually gavepeople mild cases of smallpox, followed by immunity. Thistechnique was introduced to America in the early 1700s by

preacher, science writer, and infamous Salem witch hunterCotton Mather. It was later used to protect GeorgeWashington’s troops during the American Revolution.

Inoculation worked, but it was dangerous. Smallpox usu-ally killed around 25–30 percent of infected people.Smallpox inoculation killed up to two percent. Also, patientsrecovering from inoculation could infect other people withsmallpox.

In 1798, an English doctor named Edward Jennerannounced a safer option. He investigated rumors that peo-ple who raised and milked cows rarely got smallpox. Helearned that they were often exposed to an illness thatcaused sores on the udders of cows. Cowpox did not makepeople seriously sick, and it had an amazing side effect: peo-ple who recovered from cowpox became immune to small-pox! Jenner’s experiments revealed that it was much safer toinoculate people with cowpox instead of smallpox—and justas effective. This new technique was called vaccination afterthe Latin word for “cow.”

When the 1898–1904 American smallpox epidemicbegan, vaccination was a well known and effective weaponagainst the disease. Various states and cities ordered manda-tory smallpox vaccination. When smallpox cases were dis-covered, doctors and police swooped in to isolate the sickand vaccinate everyone exposed.

However, this epidemic proved harder to control thanhealth authorities expected. As usual, bad and missing infor-mation created problems. First, the authorities rarely sharedenough information to convince people to cooperate.Instead, they used police force to make people accept isola-tion and vaccination. Americans hated that. They hid thesick, ran from the police, and even rioted in protest.

Worse, health authorities spread inaccurate information.This strain of smallpox was less deadly than doctors warned.Doctors also said that smallpox vaccination was safe andeffective. That wasn’t always true. At that time, anyone couldmake and sell vaccines. No one checked that those vaccineswere made properly! Some didn’t work at all. Others werecontaminated with bacteria. People knew that vaccinesmight make their arm sore, or worse. The problems withsmallpox vaccines became obvious when a number of chil-dren were killed by a vaccine contaminated with tetanus.

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The Battle Continues

Man with smallpox

Vaccination enforced by police officer

Modern history’s deadliest pandemic began in the UnitedStates in 1918, during the First World War. The so-called“Spanish flu” was first detected in Kansas farm country. Itthen spread to crowded American military training camps.From there it spread to soldiers fighting in Europe—and tocivilians across the whole of the world.

Deadly Mutation

“Flu” is short for “influenza.” Regular seasonal flu virusesare common, and more dangerous than most people realize.Most of us have personally recovered from flu infections atsome point in our lives. Not everyone does recover. The sea-sonal flu kills around 50,000 Americans every year, andhundreds of thousands around the globe.

Many other flu viruses live naturally in animal hosts suchas pigs or chickens. When mutating animal influenza virusesevolve a new ability to infect humans, they sometimesbecome deadlier than the regular seasonal flu.

The 1918 flu virus would prove nightmarishly lethal.

Double Disaster

The new virus broke loose at the worst possible time: dur-ing a world war. Many of history’s previous epidemics alsoerupted during times of war. This is not surprising. Warspack crowds of soldiers close together, sometimes in unsani-tary conditions. Soldiers and war refugees travel, often greatdistances. That makes it easy for diseases to spread. In mostwars of the past, diseases killed more soldiers than fighting.

In 1918, the war and the virus were a double disaster. Assoldiers got sick by the thousands, the virus made it harderto fight the enemy. At the same time, the war made it harderto fight the virus—even at home.

The U.S. government had all of its attention focused onthe war. Everyone did. The entire country was united behindthe war effort. Everyone was expected to do their part. Youngmen were drafted into mandatory military service. Old menbought war bonds to help pay for ships and tanks. Womenknitted sweaters for “our boys overseas.” Even kids helped outby collecting peach pits (which were used to make charcoalfor gas masks).

Americans contributed out of patriotism, but they werealso bombarded by propaganda and expected to followwartime laws. One new law made it illegal to “utter, print,write, or publish” any statement “disloyal” to the governmentor the war effort. American newspapers censored themselvesand repeated government propaganda. In allied countriessuch as Canada and Britain, strict censorship laws bannednewspapers from printing bad news.

This all added up to a perfect storm. The Spanish flu was adeadly pandemic, during a world war, during an epidemic ofmisinformation.

The Pandemic Begins

During the spring and summer of 1918 the first wave ofinfluenza infections spread around the world. Many soldiersgot sick. Most recovered. But the virus was evolving as itspread. New outbreaks became more severe as the summerwore on. The virus was becoming a killer.

The deadly second wave began in the Boston area in earlySeptember. Navy sailors began to fall sick. Then the virustook root among soldiers training nearby at Camp Devens.The base hospital saw a trickle of serious new flu cases. Thattrickle quickly became a raging flood. The base hospital wasdesigned to handle 1,200 patients. In two weeks, it was over-whelmed by 6,000 severely sick and dying soldiers. Anotherhundred died every day. Sick patients were crammed togeth-

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The Spanish Flu

Soldiers in Kansas sick with Spanish flu

er on floors, porches—any space the exhausted nurses anddoctors could find. Then the medics themselves began dying.

Dangerous Dishonesty

An epidemic is an emergency. Leaders must act as quicklyas possible. Emergency measures must be organized whileinfection numbers are still low. The public must be warnedwith accurate information about the rising danger.

The exact opposite happened as Spanish flu spread acrossAmerica. Leaders first ignored the problem, and then said itwas no big deal. The Spanish flu was “nothing to cause anyworry,” claimed one Boston newspaper. Camp Devens hadonly one “death that can by any stretch of the imagination beattributed to Spanish influenza,” claimed a militaryspokesperson. “The worst of the Spanish influenza epidemicis past,” claimed Boston’s health commissioner as casessoared across the city. A week later, Boston had almost 1,500dead. Hundreds more died every day.

It was the same everywhere: misinformation, mayhem,and death. On September 19th, Philadelphia’s top healthauthority reassured newspaper readers that he had “little fearthat the disease would spread to any great degree among citi-zens.” He allowed a massive parade to go ahead. This was aterrible mistake. Public gatherings were finally banned fivedays after crowds of thousands cheered for the parade. It wasfar too late. By October 7th, that same official admitted therewere 200,000 cases in the city, with hundreds dying daily.

Living in Terror

As the disease raged across America, an awful truthbecame clear: there was a nation-wide shortage of health careworkers! Thousands of the nation’s best doctors and nurseswere overseas caring for wounded soldiers. The shortage gotworse as heroic health care workers sickened and died.Hospitals were completely overwhelmed—not only overflow-ing with dying patients, but also badly understaffed.

At first, brave citizens rushed to volunteer in emergencyhospitals or drive makeshift ambulances. But as the situationworsened, people were simply too scared to help. They hud-dled at home with their families. Society stopped function-ing. Businesses closed. City streets stood silent and empty.

The Spanish flu was utterly terrifying. “The fear in thehearts of the people just withered them,” one survivorrecalled. “They were afraid to go out, afraid to do anything.… It was a horror-stricken time.” As another man reflect-ed, “You were constantly afraid…because you saw somuch death around you, you were surrounded by death.”

Death from Spanish flu was ghastly, and sometimesshockingly fast. A person who felt fine at breakfast couldbe dead by dinner. The virus attacked the lungs, but alsoother parts of the body. Some patients recovered withpermanent brain damage. In 5–15 percent of cases,

Spanish flu resembled the modern Ebola virus: victims vom-ited blood and bled from their nose, ears, or eyes.

Global Tragedy

The virus returned for a third deadly wave in the winterof 1918–1919 before it finally faded away. According to theU.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), theSpanish flu caused “at least 50 million deaths worldwide.”Around 675,000 Americans died. Tragically, the death tollwas highest among pregnant women and otherwise healthyyoung people in their 20s and 30s. Native Americans andother communities with lower immunity also suffered terri-ble losses. Entire Inuit villages were left empty.

Amazingly, the U.S. government did almost nothing tostop this catastrophe. Cities were abandoned to strugglethrough the crisis on their own. Many cities closed theatres,banned gatherings, or ordered people to wear masks. Mostpeople were eager to follow emergency orders, but somepeople protested against San Francisco’s mask law. InPhiladelphia, police went door to door recovering bodies.Steam shovels dug mass graves.

President Woodrow Wilson ignored the pandemic. Thevirus was still raging out of control when the Allied forcesdefeated Germany. The President was negotiating peaceterms when he caught the disease himself. He survived, butnever fully recovered. The virus affected his brain. The men-tally weakened President then allowed France to imposeharsh terms on Germany—terms that Wilson had stronglyopposed before falling sick. These terms angered Germans,and later fueled the rise of the dictator Adolf Hitler. Once inpower, Hitler started the Second World War.

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Over the past century, medical science has won many victo-ries in the age-old battle against contagious diseases. Thediscovery of penicillin and other antibiotics have helpedtame ancient enemies such as leprosy and bubonic plague.Vaccines made Americans safer from measles, whoopingcough, and polio. In fact, polio has been almost entirelydefeated. There hasn’t been a single case in the UnitedStates in decades. Doctors hope to eliminate thevirus everywhere within a few years.

Medicine’s most astonishing success isthe defeat of smallpox. Once a globalkiller, smallpox was especially devas-tating to Native Americans afterEuropeans introduced it to NorthAmerica. Epidemics of smallpox andother European diseases may havekilled 95 percent of some NativeAmerican populations. In modern times,scientists and doctors waged war on thedeadly virus with a global vaccination pro-gram. In 1980, world health authorities declaredtotal victory: all cases of smallpox had been eliminated fromthe Earth. The virus was extinct in the wild!

Despite these successes, germs are fighting back. Theirmain weapon is evolutionary change. The germs’ main ally?Our old adversary, misinformation.

Vaccination can control many diseases, but it only worksif people take vaccines. In recent decades, conspiracy theo-rists have spread dangerous falsehoods about vaccination,such as the claim that vaccines cause autism. That’s defi-nitely not true. Scientists have tested that claim repeatedly;vaccines do not cause autism. However, misinformation hasconvinced some people to refuse vaccines. Lowered vaccina-tion rates cause dangerous outbreaks of preventable illness-es such as whooping cough and measles.

Evolving Enemies

Germs also adapt. Bacteria that were once easily defeatedby antibiotics are constantly evolving new resistance to ourbest drugs. Antibiotic resistant tuberculosis is one such dis-ease. Scientists are in a race to discover new medicinesbefore the germs defeat our old ones.

Animal viruses continue to evolve and infect humans.When new viruses adapt to human hosts, brand new dis-eases are born. Covid-19 is just one example. This has hap-pened many times, and it will happen again in the future.

The problem with a new disease is that it’s new. By defi-nition, there are no experts on a new disease because noone has ever seen it before. It takes time for doctors and sci-entists to learn how a new disease spreads, what it does to

infected people, and how to fight it. Misinformation arisesduring that learning process.

When a new disease appears, medical experts normallymake mistakes. They may tell the public one thing, then saysomething different when they’ve gathered more evidence.It’s good for experts to share better information as they learnmore. But changing advice can confuse the public.

Incomplete facts and public confusion are a recipe forbaloney. Politicians may pick and choose which facts and

opinions they want to believe. News stories maymake a new disease sound more or less danger-

ous than it is in reality. Conspiracy theoristsmay spread complete rubbish. And, scam-

mers may rush forward with bogus claimsabout the disease or how to cure it.

Good and Bad Advice

Medicine was very primitive inmedieval times. It’s not surprising that

doctors promoted a lot of nonsense aboutthe Black Death. For example, manybelieved that nice smells protected against

the disease. If only that were true!

Other medieval plague advice would have worked wellagainst a different disease. Medieval people were told to eatwell, get rest, and “above all mix little with people… it isbest to stay at home until the epidemic has passed.” Onechurch leader sensibly warned, “In pestilence time nobodyshould stand in a great press of people because some manamong them may be infected.” Also, “it is good to wash yourhands oft times in the day,” he added.

Sadly, this advice proved practically useless during theBlack Death. The disease rarely spread between people incrowds. It spread through flea bites at home.

However, this same advice is what modern medicalexperts recommend to control the Covid pandemic: main-tain social distance, and wash your hands. This is excellentadvice for this new disease. (Please follow it and stay safe!)

Unfortunately, medical authorities have also spread badadvice about Covid. Early in the pandemic, there was ashortage of masks to protect doctors and nurses working onthe front lines. The U.S. Surgeon General told the public,

STOP BUYING MASKS! They are NOT effective in pre-venting [the] general public from catching Coronavirus,but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sickpatients, it puts them and our communities at risk!

To prevent germs from spreading in hospitals, doctorscombine fitted medical-grade masks with gowns, gloves, andface shields. It’s true that a simple cloth mask is weak protec-tion for the person wearing it. However, this was still badadvice that confused the public. Evidence shows that it doesslow the spread of Covid when everyone wears a mask.

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Fighting Diseases Today

Covid-19

coronavirus

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Pandemics like Covid-19 pose immense and difficult prob-lems for society. “But the biggest problem lies in the rela-tionship between governments and the truth,” warned histo-rian John Barry in his book about the Spanish flu, The GreatInfluenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. In apandemic, Barry explains, “Those in authority must retainthe public’s trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, toput the best face on nothing, totry to manipulate no one.”

Americans could not trust thenews or the government duringthe Spanish flu. Newspaperswere censored and full ofwartime propaganda. Healthauthorities downplayed the dan-ger until it was too late. ThePresident did nothing.

Our situation during Covid ismuch better in some ways. State and federal health authori-ties have generally done a good job by sharing sensibleadvice and accurate information. Mainstream news mediahave been helpful as well. People around the world canaccess information in seconds to tell them where Covid casesare under control, and where they are dangerously rising.

In other ways, sadly, the Covid situation is as bad or evenworse than the problems in 1918. Conservative news andentertainment sources such as Fox News have misled peopleabout the dangers of the pandemic—especially at the begin-ning when it was important to act swiftly.

Tragically, some politicians have also spread dangerousmisinformation about the pandemic. President Trump inparticular has misled the public with numerous incorrectstatements. As coronavirus cases first soared in March 2020,Trump said “We’re doing a great job with it. And it will goaway. Just stay calm. It will go away.” Of course, Covid didnot “go away.” By the time I wrote this story, the U.S. hadalready suffered almost five million cases and around160,000 deaths—far more than any other country. Around1,000 Americans were dying of the disease every day.

President Trump has done very little to stop Covid. Worse,he instead pressured states to reopen businesses and liftemergency measures before the virus was brought under con-trol. Health experts warned that opening too soon was likelyto cause an explosion of new cases, hospitalizations, anddeaths. That’s exactly what happened. However, Trump hasdenied that reopening caused the surge in new cases.

People get confused when political leaders say one thingand health authorities say another. When messages are somixed up, the public doesn’t know who to trust or what tobelieve. This makes it much harder to work together to stop

the virus.

Public confusion also makes it easier for scammers andconspiracy theorists to spread yet more misinformation.The U.S. Federal Drug Administration has already warnednumerous companies for “selling fraudulent products withclaims to prevent, treat…or cure” Covid. The internet andsocial media are crawling with bizarre false claims aboutcoronavirus. Some claim that the virus was released by evilpeople on purpose. There’s zero evidence of that.

Coronaviruses routinely jumpfrom animals to people natural-ly through evolution. Othersthink there’s some mysteriousconnection between the virusand “5G” cell phone signals.That doesn’t even make sense.Nevertheless, conspiracy believ-ers have actually burned downa number of cell phone towers!

The most dangerous conspir-acy theories convince people to

put themselves or others in danger. For example, scientistsare working hard to develop a safe and effective Covid vac-cine. If they succeed, some Americans may feel scared toget vaccinated. One conspiracy theory claims that Microsoftfounder Bill Gates is plotting to hide tracking microchipsinside coronavirus vaccines. It’s true that Gates is usingsome of his fortune to pay for vaccine research, but themicrochip claim is silly. (There would be much easier waysto track people. For example, your smartphone alreadyknows your location.) Other conspiracy theories claim thatCovid is less deadly than doctors believe, or even that thevirus doesn’t exist.

Some Americans feel fiercely opposed to wearing masksin public. Conspiracy theories claim that masks can danger-ously restrict oxygen from reaching our lungs. However,oxygen passes right through commonly used mask materi-als. (Wearing a mask does not prevent surgeons frombreathing while they work!) Others claim that masks donothing to stop germs. The reality is that a cloth mask willtrap many of the droplets we release into the air when wespeak and breathe. If we were infected and did not know,wearing a mask could protect other people from getting ourgerms. If everyone wore a mask, it would be difficult for any-one to become infected. “Cloth face coverings are one of themost powerful weapons we have to slow and stop thespread of the virus,” advises the CDC.

Humanity has battled countless epidemics throughouthistory. We’ll get through this one by learning the lessons ofthe past. To beat Covid, we need be kind to one another,take smart steps to keep each other safe, and always seekout accurate, factual, science-based information. Now morethan ever, misinformation is a germ’s best friend.

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Defeating Covid-19

Good advice

from the CDC