1. Setting aside the question of what impact the 1957 flu had on American society , the contrast in the way the US responded to that pandemic and the way we have is interesting in its own right. https://twitter.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/1246780433586626560

2. In 1957, the US had months of lead time before the virus arrived here. And it used that time to prepare. In particular,
a vaccine was developed - although not soon enough to be able to produce it in sufficient numbers to vaccinate most, let alone all, Americans.

3. Public-health authorities and well-known doctors did TV shows, like Westinghouse's "The Silent Invader" and ABC's "Asian Flu" (produced with Johns Hopkins University), telling people what to expect and how to protect themselves.

4. As the title of the Westinghouse show suggests, the authorities emphasized the seriousness of the threat (although they seem to have underestimated the severity of the virus relative to typical seasonal flus).

5. What the authorities didn't do, though, was implement any kind of social-distancing rules. Schools were kept open, large gatherings and sporting events were allowed to continue, and there was no screening of travelers, let alone quarantines.

6. So even with a vaccine, estimates are that 25% of all Americans ended up catching the virus, and more than 100K (equivalent to roughly 250k Americans today) ended up dying. In effect, the authorities decided (knowingly or not) that that was the price of business as usual.

7. And remarkably, there seems to have been backlash against the govt as a result. The GOP did lose lots of seats in the 1958 midterms, but observers attributed that to the 1957-1958 recession (which ppl, oddly, didn't really connect to the pandemic) and to the launch of Sputnik.

8. Hard to imagine a pandemic killing the equivalent of 250k Americans today and leaving little trace on the politics of the day. But that seems, in large part, to be what happened in 1957 - even though social distancing would presumably have saved many lives.