By Ilana Siyance
Coronavirus is not the first pandemic this country has ever faced—yet the ensuing shutdown is unprecedented. H3N2, better known as the “Hong Kong flu,” was an influenza strain described by the New York Times described as “one of the worst in the nation’s history.” Yet during that pandemic there was no mass shutdown. In fact, Woodstock, the Rock festival which attracted more than 400,000 people was held in August 1969, and took place during the off-peak months of the H3N2 pandemic. “I wish they had social distancing at Woodstock,” joked Patti Mulhearn Lydon, now 68, who was 17 when she attended the festival and slept outdoors without even water for washing or drinking. “You had to climb over people to get anywhere.”
The first case of H3N2, which evolved from the H2N2 influenza strain, was reported in mid-July 1968 in Hong Kong. By September, the U.S. Marines returning home from the Vietnam War brought it back with them. By mid-December, the Hong Kong flu had spread throughout all 50 states. The first wave of the virus ended in March 1969, and started up again that November.
As reported by the NY Post, the H3N2 virus had many striking similarities with COVID-19. Both pandemics spread rapidly and were known to cause upper respiratory symptoms including shortness of breath, fever, and cough. Both diseases most brutishly targeted adults over the age of 65 or those with other medical conditions, but could attack people of any age. Both viruses didn’t shy away from rich and well-known figures. H3N2 claimed the lives of then famous actress Tallulah Bankhead and former CIA Director Allen Dulles. President Lyndon Johnson and Vice President Hubert Humphrey both fell ill from H3N2 and subsequently recovered.
Similarly, COVID-19 took the lives of singer-songwriter John Prine and playwright Terrence McNally, and infected UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson who has thankfully since recovered. Even more striking, the symptoms for those who had recovered from H3N2 sound so much like COVID. “The coughing and difficulty breathing were the worst but it was the lethargy that kept me in bed,” said Jim Poling Sr., author of “Killer Flu: The World on the Brink of a Pandemic”. He added, “X-rays after recovery showed scarring at the bottom of my left lung.”
Business and schools had not shut down for H3N2. Even when Woodstock occurred, no cure had been found yet for the virus. “Life continued as normal,” said Jeffrey Tucker, the editorial director for the American Institute for Economic Research. “But as with now, no one knew for certain how deadly [the pandemic] would turn out to be. Regardless, people went on with their lives.” “That generation approached viruses with calm, rationality and intelligence,” he added. “We left disease mitigation to medical professionals, individuals and families, rather than politics, politicians and government.”
Between 1968 and 1970, the Hong Kong flu claimed roughly 1 to 4 million lives globally, and over 100,000 lives in the U.S., as per the CDC and Encyclopedia Britannica. It is still too soon to compare the casualties for the two pandemics. Coronavirus has killed over 295,000 people around the globe so far and about 83,000 in the U.S., as of Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University. Most projections, however, expect that COVID-19 will ultimately claim more lives than H3N2, despite the global shutdown.
During the H3N2 pandemic, there were only few precautions taken, without a broad shutdown. Also, the media had behaved differently then. Barely any coverage was given to the outbreak in 1968, and even the major developments in 1969 were buried in the middle of the paper. Even when a vaccine was completed in August 1969, it didn’t get much media attention. “I am still shocked at how differently people addressed — or maybe even ignored it — in 1968 compared to 2020,” said Nathaniel Moir, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
The notion that an epidemic could be controlled with social distancing and public lockdowns is relatively new, said Tucker. The first study of the sort was in 2006 by New Mexico scientist Robert J. Glass. “Two government doctors, not even epidemiologists” — Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher, who worked for George W. Bush’s administration — “hatched the idea [of using government-enforced social distancing] and hoped to try it out on the next virus,” said Tucker. We are essentially living through that large scale experiment, and we can only hope that all the precautions will help lower the number of casualties.
As per the Post, Moir brought up the different perspective people had about death at that time. In 1968, people had the sour experiences from World War II, the war in Korea, and Vietnam in which death seemed to be part of life and people became more resilient as a result. Moir also pointed out that going out to restaurants and other social events had never been as prevalent as they are now, and abstaining from them would not have made much difference in the 1960s. “A big part of our freakout over COVID-19 is a reaction to everything in this country that we’ve taken for granted,” Moir said. “When it’s taken away, we lose our minds.”
