12. Spanish Flu caused societal changes due to its virulence
As Spanish flu raged across the United States during its deadly second wave it inflicted problems on the social fabric of American towns and cities. The first was the impact on the medical community, which was already short-handed with so many doctors and nurses serving in the military as a result of the World War. Morgues were overwhelmed with the number of dead, and many were forced to leave bodies of the flu’s victims in hallways, stacked like piles of firewood. In some communities, isolation wards were established for the victims of the flu. Necessity led to the establishment of mass graves for many of the victims, due to the lack of enough grave diggers to prepare individual resting places.
Communities closed their theaters, parks, schools, and other areas where the public gathered. Some communities passed laws making it illegal to expectorate and in some cases even to sneeze or cough in public, though few policemen were willing to approach someone who did so. Folk remedies, such as carrying a potato in one’s pocket, or swabbing one’s neck with garlic or camphor, were believed by some to be effective against contracting the flu. The second wave of the Spanish Flu hit its peak before the Armistice which ended the fighting during the Great War, as it was then called, but the illness did not fully disappear, and following the end of the fighting and beginning with the return of the troops from the front, a third wave of Spanish Flu appeared worldwide.