Latest in a series of posts on the Spanish Flu
For perspective on our current coronavirus situation, we are following the entrance of the 1918 Spanish Influenza, that paragon of pandemics, into the minds and bodies of Lehigh Valley residents who got their news through the Morning Call (the files of the Bethlehem Globe are closed to us at the moment).
Allentown, November 20, 1918: “The city is on the verge of a recurrence of the influenza epidemic.”
Why? “The carelessness of a few.”
Allentown shut down for two weeks.
It has been open now for two weeks.
And the Flu is back in an “extremely serious” way.
Lack of social distancing. Lax quarantining.
The disease has not been respected seriously enough.
And now Allentown must consider shutting down again.
Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
