Thread by @opinion

– Bodies piled up
– City employees dug mass graves
– The stench from the morgue was “nauseating"
– By November, roughly 15,000 died

The tragedy of the 1918 flu could have been prevented. What other lessons can we glean from history?
twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…

In the first decade of the 20th century, isolated outbreaks of poliomyelitis — better known as “infantile paralysis” — started appearing in the U.S. during the summer.

Then it exploded in 1916 for reasons that remain a mystery, even today trib.al/Bq7ACpA

New York City closed down, but polio still spread throughout the nation.

At least 27 states had mass outbreaks before the epidemic faded in November. Faced with the danger to school-age children, towns hit hard by the disease kept schools closed trib.al/Bq7ACpA

A century later, economists Keith Meyers and Melissa Thomasson chose this first polio epidemic to study whether keeping kids out of school had long-term consequences.

What they found was striking: The closures prompted some kids to drop out of school trib.al/Bq7ACpA

Another disease that we can learn from is tuberculosis.

Though it had declined somewhat by the turn of the twentieth century, the respiratory disease remained the third most common cause of death after heart disease and influenza trib.al/GurFv1w

Middle-class Americans embraced the idea that the only way to prevent it – and maybe even cure it — was to spend as much time as possible outdoors.

Medical professionals would prescribe “natural disinfectants” – fresh air and sunshine – to counter disease trib.al/GurFv1w

In the 1920s, a group of engineers decided to tame nature – and encourage Americans to shut the windows.

Today, the U.S. uses more energy for air conditioning than all other nations in the world put together, but climate control may have a downside trib.al/GurFv1w

If everyone sits inside dry environments sealed off from the outside, we’re giving Covid what it wants and needs to reproduce.

A growing number of scientists argue that airborne transmission within climate-controlled spaces is a serious threat trib.al/GurFv1w

▶️ To learn more about what events or circumstances could spur a second wave in the U.S., watch @SMihm and @skgreen's conversation in full: twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…