In the fall of 1918, as President Woodrow Wilson scrambled to end World War I, the Spanish flu slithered its way through D.C., unsettling daily life in the same ways covid-19 is upending America today.

In 1918, they produced ads that featured Uncle Sam, saying, “Coughs and sneezes spread diseases, as dangerous as poison gas shells.”

The biggest lesson of the 1918 influenza epidemic, according to historian John M. Barry, is that leaders need to tell the truth, no

matter how hard it is to hear. John M Barry, who wrote an influential book on the 1918 pandemic, says that lying about the severity of the crisis in 1918 created more fear, more isolation, and more suffering for everyone.

“Trust in authority disintegrated, and at its core, society is based on trust,” Barry wrote in a recent New York Times column. “Not knowing whom or what to believe, people also lost trust in one another. They became alienated, isolated. Intimacy was destroyed.”

The government lied. They lied about everything. We were at war and they lied because they didn’t want to upend the war effort. You had public health leaders telling people this was just the ordinary flu by another name. They simply didn’t tell the truth about what was happening

People noticed pretty quickly what was up when their neighbors started dying 24 hours after symptoms first appeared. People were in the streets bleeding out of their noses, bleeding out of their mouths, bleeding out of their eyes and ears. It was horrific.

Everyone understood very quickly that this was not an ordinary flu. It was a disaster. People lost faith in everything — in their government, in what they were being told, in each other. It just isolated people even further.

It was a disaster. People lost faith in everything — in their government, in what they were being told, in each other. It just isolated people even further. If trust collapses, then it becomes everyone for themselves, and that’s the worst instinct in a crisis of this scale.

In 1918-1920:

Not wearing a mask was illegal in some parts of the country.

Babe Ruth returned to his hometown of Baltimore after the season ended and came down with the flu again.

Unlike today's virus, there were no asymptomatic cases. You felt very sick within ~24 hours, so healthy-looking people weren't considered a threat to one another.

With the Second wave over in Late 1919, Life returned to Normal until the "3rd Wave" Hit, in Early 1920.

Imagine for a second that COVID-19 has stopped wreaking havoc across the globe and health officials have said that it's safe to resume ordinary activities.

That's what happened during the last months of 1918. And that's how the third wave of the influenza pandemic began.

The Great War had ended, and the deadly pandemic had seemingly run its course — but the virus was still lurking.

On April 1, 1919, the puck was set to drop on Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Seattle Metropolitans and the visiting Montreal Canadiens.

But that morning, all but four Canadiens came down with the flu, causing the game — and series — to be canceled

(both teams were later engraved on the Stanley Cup above the words "SERIES NOT COMPLETED").

On an even more crushing level, 37-year-old Canadiens defenseman Joe Hall, one of the NHL's most decorated veterans, passed away two days later.

Meanwhile, in Paris ... President Woodrow Wilson fell ill so suddenly at the Versailles Peace Conference that his doctor thought he'd been poisoned in an assassination attempt. In fact, it was a severe case of the same strain of influenza.

The bottom line: At some point in the next few months, leagues and offices will clamor to re-open and citizens will be eager to return to normalcy. When that time comes, it's worth remembering the dangers of the "third wave."