Thread by @Orla_Hegarty

[Thread] Chicago didn’t have a second wave of Spanish Flu.. so what did they do, & how did the city re-open when there was no vaccine? #Ventilation #COVID19 1/

..here are the public health measures that Chicago took on the autumn of 2018
‘open window ventilation in all school rooms.. pupils warmly dressed.. daily check on pupils & absentees in schools.. use of masks.. landlords required to heat homes.. ’ 2/ documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri…

..’isolation & quarantine.. home nursing provided (see my thread on home nursing).. churches required to improve ventilation.. 150 city health officers on full time service’ 3/

..’closure of dance halls, theatres, restaurants in order to keep schools open .. ventilation of public transport.. public health doctors & nurses’ 4/

& then by late October/early November (just 6 weeks into the outbreak) theatres were allowed to reopen, social functions & public meetings resumed 5/

So what was happening to make this re-opening possible?
The Chicago Bureau of Sanitation (1911-18 report) 6/

..who understood airborne disease & spread in buildings

‘the most important factor in prevention is the air that we breath’

‘buildings merit earnest study & attention in a program of real & effective work in preventing the spread of disease’ 7/

the had boots on the ground, ‘one man for every 100,000 of population’ & a regime of regulating, inspecting, investigating & enforcing ventilation standards in buildings for public health 8/

..they had very detailed ventilation standards & buildings were inspected.. including measuring air temperature, humidity, velocity, dust particles &.. CO2 (carbon dioxide) monitoring was used to catch inadequate ventilation 9/

& Chicago had a head start on other cities, having been the first to regulate in 1911, & then having targeted improvements every year in picture-houses, street-cars, restaurants, garages etc

.. then in September 1918 the Spanish Flu epidemic arrived /10

Chicago had 1,700 street-cars, so ventilation on public transport received a lot of attention.. there were concerns about the cost of improving poor ventilation /11

but The Chicago Bureau of Sanitation prevailed.. 12/

so the Spanish Flu epidemic in Chicago pandemic was fought on the ground with building inspectors.. who measured, targeted & eliminated actual public health risks in actual buildings
‘while the work involved was enormous, the results obtained outweighed the difficulties’ /13

In parallel, Chicago rolled out home nursing to care for patients ~&~ to prevent disease spread in the community & within homes, using #ventilation to prevent disease spread /14

https://twitter.com/orla_hegarty/status/1372107857106206730

‘Nothing was done to interfere with the morale of the community’ /15

[source: Report and Handbook of the Department of Health of the City of Chicago for Years 1911 to 1918 inclusive, Influenza Encyclopaedia]

*typo 1918, not 2018