CityState: Reporter l by Ellen Liberman
The End of the Beginning
The coronavirus pandemic blasted holes in Rhode Island’s
already-frayed social safety net, and it isn’t done yet.
Between the spring of 1918 and the summer of 1919, the Spanish
flu — so named for the first country to report the pandemic — swung
a scythe around the globe. More than 500 million people were
afflicted and an estimated fifty million died. The virus whirled in the
centrifuge of World War I, spreading with troop movements and
striking healthy young adults. By the time President Woodrow Wilson
signed the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, this virulent H1N1 strain,
having infected a third of the world’s population and taken its victims,
was dying out.
Despite its devastation, the pandemic of 1918 was swiftly forgotten.
The wartime information blackouts, combined with the era’s poor
record-keeping, left little data behind. And yet its effects rippled on,
pushing social currents in different directions. Americans lost faith
in science and turned to alternative medicine. Russia decided that
the best hedge against infectious disease was socialized health care.
Historians have linked Spanish flu mortality with a rise in political
support for extremism in Germany, and to a short-term boost in
ILLUSTRATION BY ERHUI1979 / GETTY IMAGES
manufacturing wages in some United States cities. Life expectancy
dropped ten years.
Today, any armchair epidemiologist with a Google habit knows the
outline of that century-old crisis. Looking to the past for parallels to
the present and for clues to the future has become a frequent topic
of news articles. But COVID-19 will teach its own lessons. As we near
the end of the beginning of this pandemic, some Rhode Islanders are
considering the vulnerabilities exposed by this ongoing stress-test
and how we close the gaps.
One weak spot is the food system. A toilet paper shortage was the
first indication. Then, the chocolate chips disappeared and the signs
limiting meat purchases took their place alongside the price placards.
Empty grocery store shelves have been a potent symbol of COVID-19
— and yet, maintaining access to food typically has not been a part of
emergency planning, says Nessa Richman, network director of the
Rhode Island Food Policy Council. At the turn of the last century,
nearly 40 percent of Americans farmed or lived in rural areas. While
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