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Monday, May 18, 2020

Why American life went on as normal during the killer pandemic of 1969

Patti Mulhearn Lydon, 68, doesn’t have rose-colored memories of attending Woodstock in August 1969. The rock festival, which took place over four days in Bethel, NY, mostly reminds her of being covered in mud and daydreaming about a hot shower.

She was a 17-year-old high-school student from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, when she made the trek to Max Yasgur’s farm with her boyfriend Rod. For three nights, she shared an outdoor bedroom with 300,000 other rock fans from around the country, most of whom were probably not washing their hands for the length of “Happy Birthday” — or at all.

And all of this happened during a global pandemic in which over one million people died.

H3N2 (or the “Hong Kong flu,” as it was more popularly known) was an influenza strain that the New York Times described as “one of the worst in the nation’s history.” The first case of H3N2, which evolved from the H2N2 influenza strain that caused the 1957 pandemic, was reported in mid-July 1968 in Hong Kong. By September, it had infected Marines returning to the States from the Vietnam War. By mid-December, the Hong Kong flu had arrived in all fifty states.

But schools were not shut down nationwide, other than a few dozen because of too many sick teachers. Face masks weren’t required or even common. Though Woodstock was not held during the peak months of the H3N2 pandemic (the first wave ended by early March 1969, and it didn’t flare up again until November of that year), the festival went ahead when the virus was still active and had no known cure.

“Life continued as normal,” said Jeffrey Tucker, the editorial director for the American Institute for Economic Research. “But as with now, no one knew for certain how deadly [the pandemic] would turn out to be. Regardless, people went on with their lives.”

Which, he said, isn’t all that surprising. “That generation approached viruses with calm, rationality and intelligence,” he said.

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMG. They were so....so... RACIST to dare call it the Hong Kong flu...we need to immediately re- write history and proclaim the people who called it that were reprehensible... might as well say that about Lyme disease too... people who hate the New England area of Lyme must also be horrible people...(yes kiddies, this is called sarcasm).

Concerned Retiree said...

Democrats are now pushing THE NEW WORLD ORDER with the UN to destroy democracy and the US Constitution by attempting to install SOCIALISM.

Anonymous said...

Pajama kids better find a safe space.

Anonymous said...

Why was the question. Easy, absolutely No instantaneous news reporting. That's how the Vietnam war lasted as long as it did, false reporting. Only good news stories. We never knew what was going on.

Today u fart and it's all over TV and Internet LIVE.

Anonymous said...

I was 19 living and working in California and my husband was in Vietnam. Never heard about Woodstock until years later. Guess I had more important mature living to do.

Anonymous said...

Your were probably a cry in my beer fan