Podcast: Second wave of coronavirus deaths could be worse if history is any indication
Frank WitsilAbout 100 years ago, a virus — what came to be called the Spanish flu — made its way around the globe, killing more than 50 million people, including 650,000 Americans.
It was among the deadliest outbreaks in human history.
"I knew about the 1918 pandemic, and I knew that a lot of people died," historian and longtime journalist Tim Kiska said. But with coronavirus claiming the lives of thousands of Michiganders, he "wanted to know how this rolled out — exactly."
Among the thousands of Detroiters who perished in the flu pandemic: The Dodge brothers, John and Horace, founders of the Dodge nameplate and influential figures in the creation of the American auto industry.
Kiska, 67, spent about four weeks researching the past pandemic by looking through records, including accounts from 1918 to 1920 in Detroit's two major newspapers, and talking to other historians, who also studied the period.
Kiska's findings, which he is releasing as a podcast, is the latest installment in a series of free Internet audio reports on Detroit history that he has produced with four other people.
If we knew more about how the pandemic affected Detroit back then, Kiska said he thought, there might be some lessons for what we could do to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic right now.
Kiska learned the 1918 pandemic deaths didn’t just spike once, they actually came in four waves, in part, because every time people thought the worst had passed they went back out, and then more people got sick.
That's relevant now as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer plans some easing of the stay-at-home order, but also warns that despite a "trend where our numbers look pretty good," an extension is needed.
"Here's the big lesson," Kiska said. "I think we are already frustrated, incredibly so, by what we are going through right now. But, this is just wave No. 1. It could well be that we're going to have others."
Similar fears, different medicine
In the past two months, news outlets nationwide have looked closely at previous outbreaks — especially the 1918 pandemic — in hopes of finding clues about how to save lives now.
To put the 1918 situation into the context of today's population numbers, the New York Times concluded that the global death toll would be more like 200 million.
So far, worldwide deaths from coronavirus are less than 200,000 — but rising.
Still, as the New York Times emphasized, while the sense of fear in 1918 was similar to what it is now, the medical parallels between the two pandemics are vastly different.
A century ago, nations were waging the war to supposedly end all wars, World War I. The fighting drew attention away from the pandemic and, in some cases, helped suppress and obscure information about it.
The war, Kiska said, also made it difficult to order factories in Detroit to completely shut down.
In addition, at the start of the 20th century, international travel took weeks, most people lived in rural communities, people's life expectancy was much younger — in the 50s in 1917 — and doctors knew very little about what viruses even were.
Many believed at the time the sickness was caused by bacteria.
Now, in just hours, you can fly just about anywhere, most people live in cities and live longer, national economies are interdependent, and scientists can decode genetic sequences and develop antiviral drugs and vaccines.
Another contrast: The flu seemed to spare older folks while striking down people in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Older people, the New York Times report said, may have had immunity as a result of earlier virus exposures.
What the pandemics have in common is the horror of the rising death tolls and the public policy debates they inspired about how to keep Americans healthy and alive while maintaining civil liberties and the economy.
The second wave was worse
Last week, the Los Angeles Times also looked back at the 1918 flu pandemic and compared how two California cities — L.A. in the south and San Francisco to the north — took drastically different approaches to public health.
The headline: San Francisco dithered, while Los Angeles acted and saved lives.
The Los Angeles Times concluded that this "tale of two cities," offered cautionary insights for states as they respond to President Donald Trump’s not-so-subtle nudge to lift coronavirus restrictions — or in Trump's words, liberate states — so the economy can flourish again.
The Los Angeles Times also found — like Kiska — that the number of deaths didn't just spike once, they went up, then down, then up again.
In this sense, the report said, both L.A. and San Francisco shared a common failing: "A mistake that would spur a 'double hump' of contagion." In both California cities, the second wave, the newspaper found, was worse.
Kiska said the same was true in Detroit.
Alex Navarro, assistant director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan, who was interviewed on Kiska's podcast and by the Los Angeles Times, said that one challenge back then was that, once restrictions were lifted, it was difficult to bring them back.
'Major part of history'
The 1918 pandemic podcast is about 24 minutes long and takes the audience through what it was like back then and connects it to what is happening today.
It sheds light on the clash between groups that sought to close schools and businesses and those who did not.
"In Detroit, it was the military that first sounded the horn," Kiska says in his podcast, laying out the exponential number of deaths. "On Sept. 20, 1918, five sailors fell sick with what they thought was a mild flu. By Tuesday, that number had grown to 107."
The podcast also talks about two parades — one on Armistice Day to celebrate the end of hostilities in World War I and the other, later, to mark Thanksgiving — that helped spread the flu.
"This was a major part of history here," Kiska said. "It took out a lot of people."
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Kiska, an associate professor of communication at the University of Michigan Dearborn, said he started making the podcasts as an alternate form of publishing his academic research.
Not only are podcasts a popular format now, but, Kiska said, they allow listeners to hear — not just read — history unfold.
To produce his podcasts, Kiska combined the reporting skills he honed working at the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News for more than 30 years with a doctorate in history that he earned from Wayne State University.
So far he has released 20 podcasts, two seasons of 10 each.
Among the topics he talks about: How the Ku Klux Klan almost elected a mayor, cross-district school busing, the 1957 NFL champion Detroit Lions, Detroit's forgotten 1943 riot, Arab immigration to Dearborn and when the Beatles came to Detroit.
One question, though, that Kiska does not answer in his podcast on the Spanish flu was how the flu got its name when he emphasizes that "the disease had nothing to do with Spain."
As it turns out, he told the Free Press, the disease was killing soldiers, but the ongoing war led many countries to suppress news of the flu. Spain, which was neutral, allowed reports to be published and the association between the illness and that country stuck.
"People do survive," Kiska said of the pandemics that the world has faced. "But the whole question about it is: While this thing is going around, how do you minimize the damage?"
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.
About the podcast
The podcasts — which range from 20-25 minutes long — discuss Detroit's cultural, social, political, musical and automotive past. The project is by Tim Kiska, Bob Koski, Bill Kubota, Eric Kiska and Kelley Kiska, and episodes can be downloaded for free at detroithistorypodcast.com.