Post-Covid America Isn’t Going to Be Anything
Like the Roaring ’20s
Hopes of a repeat of the post-influenza Roaring ’20s
are understandable, but misunderstand the differences between then and now,
says historian John M. Barry.
A 1920s
flapper
POLITICO
illustration/Photo by iStock
By ZACK
STANTON
03/18/2021
05:40 PM EDT
Zack
Stanton is digital editor of Politico Magazine.
The
excitement is palpable. Vaccines are being injected into people’s arms, schools
are reopening, Instagram feeds are flooded with “Fauci ouchie” selfies, the
weather is heating up, the sun is out past 7 p.m., and the promise of a
post-pandemic summer has Americans frenzied with the anticipation of a
6-year-old waiting to go downstairs on Christmas morning.
If you
believe the hype, we’re in for a “Roaring 2020s,” with all of the frivolity,
excess and licentiousness of the 1920s, when a wave of euphoria washed over
much of the world after the ending of both the influenza pandemic and World War
I.
But what we’re
about to face is likely to be quite different, says John M. Barry, author of
The Great Influenza, the definitive history of the 1918 flu pandemic. Perhaps
we’ll have the post-pandemic economic boom, but there will likely be less of
the excess that defined the Roaring ’20s.
“It’ll
probably be without the sense of disillusionment, without the wildness, without
the fatalism, without the survivor’s guilt, without asking ‘Why am I alive?’”
Barry says. “I don’t think anybody who goes on a cruise ship next year is going
to be wondering, ‘Why am I alive? How come I made it?’ Psychologically, that
was all part of the Roaring ’20s.”
Behind the
flappers, bootleggers and Gatsbyesque decadence was a hard-won fatalism that
came from the level of loss and devastation wrought by the war and the flu,
which, unlike Covid, disproportionately killed younger Americans, contributing
to a sense among some who survived that since they could die young, they might
as well live hard.
Where the
Covid pandemic has stretched on and on, with Americans mostly staying at home
for the better part of a year, the flu swept through most cities in a matter of
weeks but exacted a much heavier toll. Where Covid has killed roughly 2.7
million people worldwide, the influenza pandemic of 1918-’19 killed 50 million
to 100 million people at a time the global population was less than one-fourth
its current size.
“The world
had come apart. Everybody knew people who died — everybody. And in most cases,
they knew a lot of people who died,” says Barry.
Barry also
notes that the influenza pandemic disproportionately affected young adults,
whereas older people have suffered most from Covid. One study by Metropolitan
Life found that during the 1918 pandemic, 3.6 percent of all industrial workers
ages 25–45 died within the period of a few weeks. “That’s not case mortality;
that’s mortality,” Barry says, adding, “In 1918, the deaths among young
children were astronomical.”
One
similarity between then and now: Like the influenza virus, the novel
coronavirus isn’t going to simply disappear. It doesn’t actually depend on
human beings in order to survive; it’s ambivalent about whether mankind exists
at all.
“This virus
seems to pass between people and other mammals very, very easily. That was also
true in 1918,” Barry says. In that sense, coronavirus is not unlike the 1918
flu virus, parts of which live on in the seasonal flus we experience every
year. It’s a rather sobering reality, says Barry: “This virus is here to stay.”
What can we
learn from life after the flu pandemic? What do we get wrong as we salivate
about the prospect of another Roaring ’20s? And how do the flu pandemic’s
lessons differ from the takeaways of the Covid era?
To sort
through it all, POLITICO Magazine spoke with Barry this week. A condensed
transcript of that conversation follows, edited for length and clarity.
Right now,
with vaccines being distributed and the Covid-19 pandemic seemingly in the
endgame stage in the U.S., a lot of people are pretty vocal about their hopes
for the summer. There’s been speculation about a “roaring 2020s” 100 years
after the actual Roaring ’20s. What does your research on the end of the great
influenza pandemic tell you about what we’re likely to see in the years ahead?
John M.
Barry: Well, it’s an area where I don’t think the 1918 pandemic is necessarily
a great precedent. I think we will probably get into a Roaring ’20s type of
situation, but it will have a very, very different mood.
Metropolitan
Life found that [during the influenza pandemic], 3.6 percent of all industrial
workers between the ages of 25 and 45 died in a period of weeks. That’s not
case mortality; that’s mortality. It [disproportionately affected] a targeted
demographic: young adults. It’s a different experience than what we’ve gone
through.
In 1918,
the first wave was extraordinarily mild. One statistic largely tells that
story: The French army had 40,000 soldiers hospitalized [with the flu] and
fewer than 100 deaths — and that’s without modern medicine. That’s the first
wave. When the first wave ended, there were actually medical journal articles
saying, “It’s gone. It has disappeared.”
The second
wave was much more lethal and significantly more intense. It was the one that
really counted. In the second wave, the military generally had 10 percent case
mortality — and in many instances, much higher. One of the biggest differences
between 1918 and today is duration. The second wave would move through a
community in six to 10 weeks. It was different.
The other
thing is, of course, the war — particularly in Europe. You had 20 million
people killed in World War I, [including] almost 10 million soldiers. The
United States only lost a little over 50,000 [troops]; the war, in terms of
deaths, hardly touched us.
The economy
was largely shut down — not so much by government decree, but because of
absenteeism: Everything was a war industry. Engineers weren’t available to run
railroad trains and things like that. Everything backed up. [President Woodrow]
Wilson had turned it into “total war.” Every aspect of society was aimed at
winning the war, from self-censorship in the press to laws that made it
punishable by 20 years [in prison] to “utter, print, write or publish any
disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of
government” in the United States. Most states banned the teaching of German;
sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage” — nonsense like that. Probably more
effort went into trying to get Americans to conform their thinking than at any other
time in history, including the McCarthy [Red Scare] period.
You also
had the utter and total disillusionment worldwide with the peace treaty.
Supposedly, we fought the war to “make the world safe for democracy,” etc. And
all of the ideals that we claimed to go to war for were abandoned in the peace
treaty. John Maynard Keynes called Woodrow Wilson the “greatest fraud on
Earth.” Wilson’s top aides — about a dozen of them, several of whom later
became secretaries of State — were so disgusted with what Wilson agreed to that
they thought about resigning en masse. So, you’ve got the most brutal war in
history, fought for the stupidest reasons, with the worst generalship that paid
no attention to human life.
The end of
the war came as a surprise. Nobody anticipated that it was going to end in the
middle of November 1918. Everything was gearing up for a major offensive by the
U.S. and its allies in the spring of 1919. The end was really abrupt and
unexpected. So, when it did end, there was an extraordinary amount of euphoria
— and that occurred, in many cases, almost simultaneously with the end of the
pandemic.
“I don’t think anybody who goes on a cruise ship next
year is going to be wondering, ‘Why am I alive? How come I made it?’”
The Roaring
’20s was in Europe as well as the United States. How do you separate the war
from the pandemic? It’s not really possible. The pandemic was a factor, but I
think the war was a bigger factor. That doesn’t mean that the pandemic had no
impact.
I do expect
a kind of “roaring 2020s” [this time around], but really because of the
economic freeing of people. They’ve been penned up for more than a year, and
they’re going to want to spend money and celebrate. But it’ll probably be
without the sense of disillusionment, without the wildness, without the
fatalism, without the survivor’s guilt, without asking “Why am I alive?” I
don’t think anybody who goes on a cruise ship next year is going to be
wondering, “Why am I alive? How come I made it?” Psychologically, that was all
part of the Roaring ’20s.
You know,
we consider the Roaring ’20s this time of frivolity and excess, but you’re
saying that perhaps a more accurate way to think of it is not simply as this
moment of elation, but as an almost manic response to living through the Great
War and flu pandemic?
The world
had come apart. Everybody knew people who died — everybody. And in most cases,
they knew a lot of people who died.
What we’re
facing today is, of course, quite different. It’s tragic. Most of the people
who’ve died were elderly, and I’m certainly in the target demographic this time
around myself. But there have been relatively few [fatalities] among otherwise
healthy young adults, and practically none among children. In 1918, the deaths
among young children were astronomical. I don’t think this statistic has ever
been published, but somebody I know did the calculation that children under the
age of 5 died at a rate equal today to all-cause mortality for a period of 23
years. That is a lot of kids, and remember, that’s compressed into a time frame
of six to 10 weeks. There was a kind of tragedy and terror during the course of
the flu pandemic in 1918 that’s just not there today.
“There was a kind of tragedy and terror during the
course of the flu pandemic in 1918 that’s just not there today.”
In, say,
1925, if you were a European male in your late 20s or early 30s, I guarantee
that you felt lucky to be alive since you weren’t killed in the war or
pandemic. The United States, again, only lost around 53,000 soldiers, so you
didn’t have that same sense of loss, but we did see plenty of tragedy from the
pandemic.
The Roaring
’20s conjures images of flappers, speakeasies, of The Great Gatsby and the
Harlem Renaissance. Undoubtedly, that romanticizes and oversimplifies it. After
the flu pandemic, what was life really like for most Americans?
You had the
economy came back in a very big way. There was a brief recession [in 1921] that
was fairly intense. There was dislocation: The war industry stopped producing,
there was an abrupt stop to businesses’ profits, and you suddenly had 4 million
men in the primes of their working [lives] leaving the military and going back
to jobs that might or might not exist. You had a lot of unemployed people.
“A lot of things that weren’t great went on in the
1920s, particularly in the first five years. It wasn’t just the ‘Roaring
’20s.’”
There was a
tremendous amount of racial problems. I think 26 cities had major race riots,
including a very significant one in Chicago. Tulsa. Elaine, Arkansas, had a
massacre. Black troops had been treated much better in France than they were in
the United States. The Klan had many millions of members. They took over states
from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. In 1924 at the Democratic National
Convention, the issue of whether or not to condemn the Klan’s violence failed
[in a vote by delegates]. There was plenty of anti-immigrant sentiment.
[Congress] passed anti-immigration legislation unlike any we’ve seen before or since.
A lot of
things that weren’t great went on in the 1920s, particularly in the first five
years. It wasn’t just the “Roaring ’20s.”
As the
pandemic drew down, were people concerned about the possibility of new variants
of the flu?
No. The
scientific community didn’t know what a “virus” was; the definition of “virus”
came out of flu pandemic research, but not until 1925. In fact, you could
argue, as I did in my book, that the discovery that DNA carried the genetic
code actually came out of research on influenza, but not until 1944.
They knew
there were very small organisms that passed through the smallest filters, but
they didn’t know if they were bacteria or a different kind of organism. They
understood that bacteria could mutate and change as they passed through people
and reproduced. They recognized, in retrospect, that it was the same virus in
the first wave and the second wave, but that it had changed. However, it then
began to mutate in the direction of ordinary influenza viruses. There was a third
wave in the spring of 1919, and it was pretty lethal, but nothing like the
second wave. The virus hung around, and viruses circulating today are still
descendants of the 1918 influenza virus — some elements of it, anyway.
In your
book, The Great Influenza, you wrote about how the pandemic didn’t really end
all at once, but gradually faded away into the early 1920s. Should we have
similar expectations about coronavirus?
Yeah.
Certainly, the consensus view is that this thing is here to stay. There are a
couple of reasons for that. Number one: The vaccines are not 100 percent
effective. Number two: There’s going to be a significant number of people who
will never get vaccinated.
We may
still reach “herd immunity,” but the virus will still circulate. That’ll be
especially true once you get outside the developed world, where vaccines will
be widely available. Once you get into parts of South America and Africa and
India … I mean, India produces as much vaccine as any country in the world, but
to vaccinate 80 percent of its population [of 1.38 billion people], that’s a
pretty big task. There will be a reservoir of people who will never be
vaccinated, and among whom the virus can circulate.
“This virus is here to stay.”
In
addition, this virus seems to pass between people and other mammals very, very
easily. That was also true in 1918. Essentially every mammal was known to be
infected by the 1918 influenza virus. Tigers. Moose. Even seals — we don’t know
if it infected whales, but it infected seals. It’s pretty clear that we gave
the virus to pigs in 1918 in Iowa.
[Similarly,]
the coronavirus passes very easily from mammals to humans, and probably passes
very easily back to mammals from humans.
And because
of that, coronavirus is ambivalent about whether or not humans exist; it
doesn’t need civilization for its own survival?
Right. It
came from somewhere else. This virus is here to stay.
Several
years ago, in a new epilogue for The Great Influenza, you wrote: “In a truly
lethal pandemic, state and local authorities could take much more aggressive
steps [at mitigation to stop the spread of a virus], such as closing theaters,
bars and even banning sports events … and church services.” Have you been
surprised by the degree to which taking exactly those measures during this
pandemic has proven politically controversial?
Well, I’m
disappointed. I don’t know if I’ve been surprised.
I’m disappointed
this has been politicized; that didn’t happen in 1918. There were official
government sources in 1918 who, in effect, said, “This is a hoax.” They said
things like, “This is ordinary influenza by another name.” But nobody believed
that, because they saw it. They saw somebody who lived across the street die 24
hours after their first symptoms — sometimes with horrific symptoms.
“I’m
disappointed this has been politicized; that didn’t happen in 1918.”
1918 was so
much more lethal [than the Covid-19 pandemic], and it dealt with young people.
This time around, very few people who are otherwise healthy and young have
died. [The flu] moved fairly slowly around the country. And even though the
virus continued to circulate and there was a third wave and so forth, the six-
to 10-week period during which it took over a community was pretty distinct.
When that period ended and that community reached herd immunity, the flu
essentially disappeared. This time, it’s likely to be more gradual.
Right,
we’re not likely to have a moment like you described taking place in San
Francisco on Nov. 21, 1918, when every siren in the city goes off, signaling
that people could stop wearing their masks.
By the time
the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] makes a judgment that masks
are no longer necessary, my guess is that 45 states will have already [ended
their mask mandates]. There may still be private establishments that require
them.
One thing
that has struck me is that I never imagined that so-called “non-pharmaceutical
interventions” could be as effective as they have been when properly applied. I
participated in early conceptualizing of the pandemic preparedness plan and was
actually a skeptic. I thought they were worth doing, I supported them, but I
was skeptical about how much impact they would have. I won’t say that this
country has proved their effectiveness, but other countries have proved that
they can be (literally) unbelievably effective in containing the virus — more
than I ever imagined.
The big
lesson you took away from the flu pandemic was about the importance of truth
and need of the government and public officials to tell the truth — which they
didn’t in 1918 as they downplayed the threat, and which the press at the time
abetted them in doing. Were people at the time aware they were being misled?
Oh, they
had to be. Sure. Again: “ordinary influenza by another name”? You had, in
Philadelphia, almost 15,000 deaths in a few weeks. [Nationally,] it depressed
life expectancy by 10 years. Of course they knew they were being lied to.
If the big
lesson that you took away from the flu pandemic was about the importance of
truth, what, at this point, do you see as the big lesson of the Covid-19
pandemic?
I think the
same lesson has been reinforced. And that’s why we have 538,000 deaths.
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