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Recently, many have said that the country has never enacted policies like the ones we're currently seeing regarding social distancing and the restriction of businesses. Forgive my microbiology geekery here, but that is patently false. Buckle up folks, here's a thread for you: 1/7
During undergrad, I did two separate semester-long projects on the Spanish Influenza (H1N1) Pandemic of 1918. Although it wasn't called social distancing back then, make no mistake, the policies put in place all across the country then were the same as the ones we have now. 2/7
This paper on emerging and infectious disease from 2006 demonstrated how the lessons learned in 1918 (school closures, limiting social gatherings) would be beneficial "against a highly virulent strain in the absence of vaccine and antiviral drugs." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3372334/ 3/7
Cities that enacted sweeping closures early saw lower death tolls than those that enacted policies later and, obviously, had less catastrophic results than those that had no closures whatsoever. Moreover, their economies recovered faster as well. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/upshot/coronavirus-cities-social-distancing-better-employment.html 4/7
This makes sense because H1N1, much like COVID-19, decimated all age groups, including those who made up much of the workforce in 1918. Early interventions made sure that those people were able to return to work once it was safe to do so. 5/7
A study titled "Pandemics Depress the Economy, Public Health Interventions Do Not" ( https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3561560) found that the economies of cities that acted aggressively not only recovered faster, but actually grew faster afterwards as well. 6/7
None of this is to minimize what businesses across our state are feeling right now. It is a frightening and anxious time. But history and yes, science, are on our side. The policies @GovWhitmer has enacted have proven before to save lives, and I have faith they will again. 7/7
