We Stand at an Eerily Similar Phase as the Spanish Flu

In a pandemic that stretched for almost 30 long months, the Spanish Flu was unprecedented for its high mortality rates and a lethal silent demeanour. The pandemic spread, slowly at first, in waves, peaking and falling at different times and at different places. By the time it was done, the pandemic picked up a body count of more than 50 million individuals across the still largely unconnected world of that era.

The covid flu has now completed more than six months in a world that is infinitely more connected than the distant times of 1918. And unknowingly, we are at the doorsteps of inviting hell all over. Just as the first wave of the Spanish flu led to a flurry of fatigue and an abandonment of social distancing and following medically sound advice, the protests against masks or social distancing have taken a bewildering life of its own and is now an animal that refuses to follow the essential rules of managing a life-threatening pandemic.

In many ways, we have done better than the hapless administrators of 1918 where mask-wearing sermons were hardly adhered to and international communication on the disease had inexplicably turned silent after the first wave. The governments of the day, after an initial spell of publicizing safety measures took to cautionary advisories when the much more deadly second wave hit the world. Initial shoutouts soon spun into prophylactic messaging which in turn evolved into neglect and often disdain for the disease. The apparent casualness of managing a rampaging pandemic as bodies piled was intricately linked to the intent behind the messaging shared with the larger population.

We are standing in a similar quagmire today. From an inordinately loud messaging that invoked covid management to stigma and set the tone for the coming months, the memo was simple and unidirectional in the initial weeks. Just as the Spanish Flu, most governments went ahead with a war-like approach with the onus squarely upon winning over the enemy. As realization crept in that it is not a war with definite winners or losers, the narrative slowly shifted towards managing the disease. Now, seven months into the pandemic, silence appears to have become the official communication strategy of most governments. Silence coupled with a lack of standing upto rumours that in the age of social media has magnified several times over when compared to the comparatively isolated communities of 1918.

The India of today sits at the cusp of losing control over the communication war on covid. As covid coverage loses credibility in media and communities panic over lost livelihood opportunities, average citizens have nowhere to turn too. The unlock process accentuated the sentiment that things are coming back to normal and fatigue over following rules have met with a strong resistance. Memories of the early weeks of strong-arm tactics and the loss of credibility of civic authorities have brought the entire nation to a Catch-22 situation where covid is feared and yet fatalism predominates the discourse. The yet seemingly insurmountable challenge that the virus has posed before science and the crippling inability to find a cure is also a factor accounting for the generation of fear among the masses. The two strange bedfellows - fear and fatality - have an ally in the form of increased miscommunication about the vitality of the pandemic. Too many people in positions of influence have tried to normalize the disease which has the potential of catching fire and spreading deep into the crevices of a vulnerable society.

We have inadvertently pushed for a communication strategy that put too much credibility into a lockdown while not pushing enough for the relatively boring strategy of ‘wearing masks’ or ‘keeping a distance’. Now, as the country unlocked amidst abounding cases, the communication flounders as it seeks to tear itself away from the ‘lock-unlock” worldview. Meanwhile, the society is tearing at its seams as cases increase and the number of sick stay away from productive work. We are witnessing the beginnings of a societal transformation where deflated demand and a depressed economy gains strength inspite of frequent calls of an economic revival.

We have an opportunity to learn from the Spanish Flu of 1918 and enough to fear from it. For all the calls of covid being relatively harmless, the Spanish Flu had the wherewithal to incubate within 3-4 days and could spread fast through communities extinguishing rapidly in the process. Covid on the other hand, as we know now, moves at a languid pace and in the fourteen or so days, it takes to incubate within a body, the disease has the potential of infecting a much larger population than was fathomable during the worst months of the Spanish Flu. Governments of an earlier era did not take the Spanish Flu seriously and governments of the day have taken to a cycle of reassurance and silence to counter covid. For naysayers, several people in the preliminary days of the Spanish Flu had taken to terming the pandemic as a seasonal flu, eerily akin to the common discourse of the past few weeks. In between both the pandemics lies the truth that the society wants to hear.

Uncomfortably, it appears that the wisdom of quarantining, wearing masks and distancing gained from managing ancient diseases holds true today as well. The Italian writer and poet Giovanni Boccaccio (l. 1313-1375 CE), author of “The Decameron” which recounts the tales of a group of ten individuals trying to escape the plague by seclusion, describes in his introduction the main ways in which people reacted to the pestilence( Black Death): “There were some people who thought that living moderately and avoiding any excess might help a great deal in resisting this disease, and so they gathered in small groups and lived entirely apart from everyone else. They shut themselves up in those houses where there were no sick people.”

Notwithstanding the potential mortality rate of the coronavirus or its needless comparisons to road accidents, the Ebola virus, deaths due to cancer and AIDS or even vague analogies such ‘Life is temporary and we all die one day’, the communication strategy must stand steadfast to its commitment on informing the society of the need to take basic precautions. Neither is this pandemic ordinary nor is it a rumour, it is real and deserves not the fear but the respect it deserves. Any communication, currently or in the forthcoming second or third wave will need to stand true to its moral prerogative and convey the truth about the disease, unblemished and removed of greasepaint. And lest we forget, the second wave of the Spanish Flu spread in the fall of 1918.