The
year was 1957.
Elvis’s
new movie “Jailhouse Rock” was packing the theaters. The last episode of “I
Love Lucy” aired on television. The show “West Side Story” held tryouts in
Washington, D.C., and opened on Broadway in September. Ford’s new car the Edsel
rolled off the assembly line. The Cold War with Russia was on and “In God We
Trust” appeared on U.S. currency. The first Toys R Us store opened.
Also that year, the so-called Asian Flu
killed 116,000 Americans. Here is the full summary from the Centers for Disease
Control:
In
February 1957, a new influenza A (H2N2) virus emerged in East Asia, triggering
a pandemic (“Asian Flu”). This H2N2 virus was comprised of three different
genes from an H2N2 virus that originated from an avian influenza A virus,
including the H2 hemagglutinin and the N2 neuraminidase genes. It was first
reported in Singapore in February 1957, Hong Kong in April 1957, and in coastal
cities in the United States in summer 1957. The estimated number of deaths was
1.1 million worldwide and 116,000 in the United States.
Like
the current pandemic, there was a demographic pattern to the deaths. It hit the
elderly population with heart and lung disease. In a frightening twist, the
virus could also be fatal for pregnant women. The infection rate was probably
even higher than the Spanish flu of 1918 (675,000 Americans died from this),
but this lowered the overall case fatality rate to 0.67%. A vaccine
became available in late 1957 but was not widely distributed.
The
population of the U.S. at the time was 172 million, which is a little more than
half of the current population. Life expectancy was 69 as versus 78 today. Even
with shorter lives, it was a healthier population with lower rates of obesity.
To extrapolate the data to a counterfactual, we can conclude that this virus
was more wicked than COVID-19 thus far.
What’s
remarkable when we look back at this year, nothing was shut down. Restaurants,
schools, theaters, sporting events, travel – everything continued without
interruption. Without a
24-hour news cycle with thousands of news agencies and a billion websites
hungry for traffic, mostly people paid no attention other than to keep basic
hygiene. It was covered in the press as a medical problem. The notion that
there was a political solution never occurred to anyone.
Again,
this was a very serious flu, and it persisted for 10 years until it mutated to
become the Hong Kong flu of 1968.
The New
York Times had some but not much coverage. On September 18, 1957, an
editorial counseled: “Let us all keep a cool head about Asian influenza as the
statistics on the spread and the virulence of the disease begin to accumulate.
For one thing, let us be sure that the 1957 type of A influenza virus is
innocuous, as early returns show, and that antibiotics can indeed control the
complications that may develop.”
The mystery of why today vast numbers
of governments around the world (but not all) have crushed economies, locked
people under house arrest, wrecked business, spread despair, disregarded basic
freedoms and rights will require years if not decades to sort out. Is it the
news cycle that is creating mass hysteria? Political ambition and arrogance? A
decline in philosophical regard for freedom as the best system for dealing with
crises? Most likely, the ultimate answer will look roughly like what historians
say about the Great War (WWI): it was a perfect storm that created a calamity
that no one intended at the outset.
For
staying calm and treating the terrible Asian flu of 1957 as a medical problem
to address with medical intelligence, rather than as an excuse to unleash
Medieval-style brutality, this first postwar generation deserves our respect
and admiration.
Jeffrey
A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic
Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly
and popular press and eight books in 5 languages, most recently The Market Loves You. He is also the editor
of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics
of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture. Jeffrey is available
for speaking and interviews via his email.
