The Evolution of Public Response During Pandemics - Raghav Vacher

Several comparisons have already been made between the current COVID-19 pandemic and other several pandemics we've had in the past. Most prominently, the Spanish Flu of

1918 has been compared to the current pandemic due to the size and impact it had (5 million deaths and approximately 500 million cases). But most comparisons remain constricted to the numbers and tend to overlook the public and administrative reaction to the situation and while looking at the numbers and symptoms is informative in a medical nature, a comparison of the public outcry gives us a deep look inside the mental workings of people during a worldwide pandemic, which we as a species can learn from.

Something to note would be that the documentation used for this comparison focuses on two areas that were heavily documented during the 1918 pandemic. Moving forward, we're aware that several people have broken lockdown and refused to wear a mask publicly, undermining public safety. But was this the case during the pandemic in the past? Well, the situation might be slightly different but still, some things remain similar. Ironically the article that notes the happenings of the old pandemic starts with the quote: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.". The two cities in question are St. Paul and Minneapolis, who were both infected via sailors and soldiers returning from World War 1 and had different philosophies when it came to handling the disease. St. Paul focused on quarantining people affected while Minneapolis did not, due to which in theory people were discouraged to report cases in St. Paul, unlike Minneapolis, which skewed the number of cases reported in each city.

While the cities followed different philosophies, one thing remained common between the two of them: cases of people not following health safety rules. The Hennepin County School Board (Minneapolis) openly defied the closing order from the city council as it was against economic benefit, as they mentioned: "The school board was concerned for the health of the students as well as the “12,000 dollars a day that the closing orders cost because teachers continued to be paid." They lived up to their word as they kept the schools open via the consent of the parents only to be closed by the threat of police intervention. Sports were also affected negatively during this time, creating animosity between the citizens of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The bowling team of St. Paul petitioned to reinstate public games but that was denied for obvious reasons, while the football team of Minneapolis simply worked around the rules by playing practice matches instead of competitive as only the competitive matches were banned. Another quite surreal thing was the backdoor found in salons during lockdown, which are quite comparable to the people protesting to get haircuts in some countries during the COVID pandemic. There were also stories of individuals defying the lockdown rules with news stories popping everywhere, with one mentioning: “Disregard of the city quarantine yesterday caused the arrest of one man who insisted on taking his child from the city hospital before the patient was ready to be discharged. The mother and father and the child later were found mingling with other persons in the neighborhood.”.

The biggest issue looking at these situations was not the people’s defiance of the rules but the lack of application and strictness via the city committees. The rules were created for name’s sake and even Dr. Bracken, of the State Board of Health at the time advocated the wearing of masks himself but didn’t wear one, mentioning that he’s ready to take his chances. A certain lack of direction and clarity in the official information portals created confusion and leniency that led to such rule defying events to take place.

Comparing this situation to our current predicament displays how our thinking has evolved. First of all, the administrative response drastically improved in 2020. The World Health Organization can be considered a blessing as it became an authoritative voice during the 1950s and even in the current year has been instrumental in informing the public and providing us some direction. Arguably, while some people might question the power of the WHO on the international stage, it still has been very important; working with governments and companies constantly to inform the general public. Similarly, governments on a national, state and local level have been active much more than they were at the beginning of the 20th century and while some governments have been skeptical of the virus, again, on a large scale they have been much more active. The public response remains rather similar though. Dissent and confusion remain quite characteristically similar, only manifested in different ways. While breaking quarantine, defying rules, and protesting for haircuts remains consistent, we do see the public being more patient and understanding in the current pandemic. This is in consideration that currently more cases of people breaking rules are being publicized in an already well-connected world, so it is really easy to assume that we might have it bad. Still, education rates are at a high, and more people tend to have an understanding of a worldwide pandemic than they did anytime before in history. The focus on economic interest is also something to consider as we humans were and still are stuck on the financials of the situations as previously mentioned. But there is a point to argue that we might be more financially focused as even in an advanced world with the best medical facilities and the highest living standard, people are still forced to work, especially for minimum wage workers who have to risk their lives to pad the bottom line of multi-billion dollar corporations. People are legitimately considering going out and working because they won’t be able to make rent next month and already expensive college tuition rates are being bumped up even higher, even when most college classes are online.

Therefore, while some things have drastically improved, we’ve still seen that the financial aspect of the pandemic has gotten bigger and the situations mentioned barely scratch the surface of how horrible the struggle is for financially unprotected people, who have drastically increased as the middle class has been squeezed over the past few years. But why should we compare these pandemics? Well, the answer isn’t something new in all honesty; it’s something you already know because I’ve mentioned it in this article. It’s all about learning from history. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do here. It’s been established that we’ve clearly learned from our past to a certain extent, so what now? Well, it’s to prepare yourself and learn from this information. Obviously and hopefully we would not have another pandemic in the recent future but via this exercise we can put complicated human reactions in almost an anecdotal manner to understand and learn, to make sure we don’t have a toilet paper scarcity the next time this happens and I hope that I was successful in that.

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1997248/