Dodge the Flu by Going to School
by Jake Buessem
As the Spanish Flu swept across America in 1918, the people of Nyack, New York found themselves scrambling to respond. At a school board meeting on October 17, Nyack officials discussed the best way to protect the children. The meeting started off with a proposition from a trustee of the board to close the schools, but he did not receive much support. The school physician then came forward to speak. He argued that children were safer at school because they could be easily monitored and sent home if they displayed symptoms. Officials assumed that “the children were safer in the school than out inasmuch as in the school they are under supervision and away they may be playing in the streets or gathering in stores or other places where crowds congregate.”
This meeting and a subsequent one convened with local health officials were held in response to New York State Public Health Council guidelines put out that same week. The State Health Commissioner released an advisory which included the “temporary close of crowded assemblies including schools…” Certain areas of New York, however, did not follow these guidelines. New York City set a precedent that other counties, including Nyack, followed by sending kids to school in the belief that it was easier to monitor them. Keeping students grouped together in classrooms with little to no protective gear inevitably spread the flu rapidly in schools. School physicians sent individual students home as soon as they displayed symptoms, but this was often too late since the symptoms involved coughing and sneezing. The flu spread quickly through schools and communities using these practices, such as Nyack.
New York’s response to the flu was characterized by a lack of cohesive leadership and poor direction from health officials. In Nyack, the Board of Health was quick to respond to New York State guidelines, but local leaders fought and disagreed on how to respond. The back and forth led to the community ignoring some of these suggestions, even after resolutions were made. Another failure of leadership came from New York City’s Health Commissioner, who, in order to quell widespread fear, said the flu was actually just pneumonia. Ultimately, the Spanish Flu spread through the region, wiping out many, but then struggled to come back for a second and third wave. So many people got the flu that most New Yorkers either died or built natural immunity, so more waves of the virus could not arise. Nyack did eventually start to ban crowded gatherings such as community dances, which slowed down the spread. Historians debate on what we can learn from the Spanish Flu epidemic, but this example demonstrates that we should not send our kids to school when a virus is peaking.
Works Cited
Secondary Sources:
Crosby, Alfred W. America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918. West Nyack: Cambridge University Press, 2003. https://www-fulcrum-org.libdatabase.newpaltz.edu/epubs/ft848q88b?locale=en#/6/162[xhtml00000081]!/4/4/1:0
Escuyer, Kay L, Meghan E Fuschino, and Kirsten St. George. “New York State Emergency Preparedness and Response to Influenza Pandemics 1918-2018.” Tropical medicine and infectious disease 4, no. 4 (2019). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6958434/.
Navarro, Alexander J, and Howard Markel. “Politics, Pushback, and Pandemics: Challenges to Public Health Orders in the 1918 Influenza Pandemic.” American Journal of Public Health (1971) 111, no. 3 (2021). https://web-p-ebscohost-com.libdatabase.newpaltz.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=527ca4d2-db9c-4420-95a2-602860a07875%40redis&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=148624502&db=rzh.
Primary sources:
“Would Close Public Building in Nyack.” Nyack Evening Journal, October 18, 1918. https://news.hrvh.org/veridian/?a=d&d=jaaggbbf19181018.1.1&srpos=2&e=-01-1917-27-12-1920–en-20–1–txt-txIN-quarantine+influenza——.
“Chelsea Dance Postponed.” Nyack Evening Journal, November 1, 1918. https://news.hrvh.org/veridian/?a=d&d=jaaggbbf19181101&e=-01-1917-27-12-1920–en-20–1–txt-txIN-quarantine+influenza——.
Image:
Boynton, Frank D. Medical Inspection, in Actual Government of New York (Ginn and Company, 1918), 63. https://archive.org/details/actualgovernmen00boyn/page/63/mode/1up?view=theater.