Denver's Flu History: Shedding Light On What A Coronavirus Outbreak Could Look Like

With recent developments concerning the novel coronavirus (Covid-19), the 1918 Flu Pandemic has popped up in articles and conversations. Why is a 102-year-old influenza pandemic on people's minds? 

Read on to discover what lessons (and perspective) Denver's response to past flu outbreaks can provide in 2020.

On March 12, 1976, the Denver Post revealed 24,183 cases of flu had been reported in Colorado. The death toll had reached 44 persons.

Sure, these weren't 1968 pandemic figures, but it was clear that the new A2 Victoria flu strain outbreak was severe.

For F. David Matthews, U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, the real worry in 1976 was not A2 Victoria flu, but rather Swine flu (Influenza A Virus Subtype H1N1), which had killed a young soldier at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in February.

On March 15, 1976, Matthews wrote an ominous memo to James Thomas Lynn at the Office of Management and Budget:

There is evidence there will be a major flu epidemic this coming fall.

The indication is that we will see a return of the 1918 flu virus that is the most virulent form of flu. In 1918 a half million people died. The projections are that this virus will kill one million Americans in 1976.

[Spoiler alert: emergency legislation for the National Swine Flu Immunization Program was signed on April 15, 1976. The program, which aspired to vaccinate 80% Americans in a short period of time, encountered problems, many relating to the use of live virus vaccines, which caused adverse side effects in some individuals.]

There were nineteen influenza-related deaths among Student Army Training Corps soldiers at the University of Colorado at Boulder​ in late September 1918, but Denver’s Manager of Health (and former Denver Mayor), Dr. William H. Sharpley, felt flu cases reported in his own city had been misdiagnosed. On October 3, 1918, the Rocky Mountain News declared Denver free of flu. 

Two days later, the same newspaper reported 10 influenza-related deaths.

On October 8, Dr. Sharpley proclaimed that “the plague is under control."

Meanwhile, he instructed Denver police to enforce spitting bans (while they discontinued brothel raids and arrests of vagrants for fear of bringing flu into the jail) and told the tramway to keep streetcar windows open. The city sanitation department now washed the downtown streets and sidewalks nightly.

On November 11, Sharpley lifted the meeting ban. The day marked the end of World War I and thousands of citizens took to the streets in raucous celebration.

On November 23, theater and movie house proprietors—who had taken a major financial hit during the closing ban—marched (in gauze masks) to Mayor William Mills' office, demanding the closing order be overturned. Sharpley and Mills caved to the pressure, and the order was reversed.

In Denver, the Spanish flu pandemic did not let up much over the course of December.

On January 3, 1919, the Denver Health Department released statistics for 1918. Some 12,718 influenza cases that resulted in 1,218 deaths were reported in Denver—a rate much higher than other cities of Denver's size.