However, social distancing and quarantine was recommended by the Swedish health authority in the early stages of the pandemic. I refered to the society wide lockdowns, those kinds of measures were not applied (could not have been applied) in 1918.
I agree it was a more local response, some locations closed bookstores others kept them open etc. But we only created the CDC in response to the Spanish flu, there simply wasn’t a national organization developed to handle pandemic response.
I'm talking about lockdowns. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lockdowns
> there simply wasn’t a national organization developed to handle pandemic response.
Exactly. But not only that, our technical and economic capability to implement such lockdowns widely eclipse the society of 1918. These are enormous differences.
They had actual fines and up to 10 says of prison time for failing to follow mask mandate in SF. This was then copied by other cities in California and other states across the US.
In most places they just shut down schools without any remote learning whatsoever.
That said, the city vs country decide was much stronger before cars. We had less than 1/3 of todays population and large chunk of that was still living on single family farms.
This article from the university of Michigan describes the pandemic regulations in SF: https://www.influenzaarchive.org/cities/city-sanfrancisco.ht...
From what I understand: 1. There were no wide lockdowns. Theaters, dancehalls and schools closed temporarily. But there were nothing like the mandatory and enforced lockdowns we've seen across the globe the last couple of years (China, Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, etc). The state did not pay people money to stay at home from work, which we've seen in many countries the last couple of years. Closing dancehalls is not a lockdown. 2. Breaking the mask mandate did not lead to prison time like you insinuate. The article says most infringements lead to "a stern warning". 3. Despite the relatively harsh restrictions SF did not fare particularly well counting the number of deaths from the illness.
I maintain my claim that it was *not* the scientific consensus before 2020 that wide swats of the population should be made to stay at home and not work as a response to an influenza pandemic.
Spanish flu: “Social distancing measures were introduced, for example closing schools, theatres, and places of worship, limiting public transportation, and banning mass gatherings.”
“Maritime quarantines were declared on islands such as Iceland, Australia, and American Samoa” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
And just to show how little had changed: “Wearing face masks became common in some places, such as Japan, though there were debates over their efficacy.[173] There was also some resistance to their use, as exemplified by the Anti-Mask League of San Francisco.“ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci...