1918's influenza epidemic, here: Part 2 - The forgotten scourge

Historical studies of the U.S.’s great influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 often note its relative historical unrememberedness. Even as it was occurring Americans arguably downplayed the epidemic’s harrowing cost in human suffering and deaths. More than a few reasons have been suggested. For one, the influenza epidemic’s worst weeks, in October and November 1918, coincided with the triumphal advances and ultimate victory of the Allied forces in World War I. In the Wallace Press-Times, for example, war coverage dominated October’s and November’s news pages, reducing space available to influenza coverage. The American war effort may even have harbored an implicit warrant that only upbeat, supportive, and positive news should emanate from the American homefront, thus also subtly muting the record of the epidemic’s devastating course. The war’s progress, moreover, was indisputably a public drama playing out on a wide European stage whereas the epidemic’s stateside story was more often one of private tragedy shielded from public view behind the closed doors of afflicted and grieving households.