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A few years ago the Center where I work at the University of Michigan undertook a study of a small number of communities in the United States that "escaped" the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic.

After eliminating a few communities that some scholars claimed had escaped 1918 (such as Darien, Connecticut) and unearthing a few new ones (Fletcher, Vertmont), we wrote a report and created a digital archive with primary source materials.

These seven communities had death rates in the range of 0 to 3, although varying infection rates.

What allowed them to "escape" the 1918-1919 pandemic, which took approximately 650,000 lives in the United States, and, some estimates say, 50 million worldwide?

First, they had spatial characteristics that made them remote, inaccessible, or already under some kind of social quarantine. For example, the naval base at Yerba Buena island, San Francisco, could only be reached by boat, and all traffic in and out was strictly controlled during fall 1918. During the period that exacting boundary control was in force, no one presented with or died of influenza. The Western Pennsylvania Institution for the Blind, located in Pittsburgh, in keeping with patterns of the early 20th century, segregated blind children from the rest of society, an arrangement that protected this community during fall 1918.

We coined the term "protective sequestration" to define this action, of communities consciously shielding themselves from potential incursion of the virus before any cases were reported in their vicinity.

Second, when public health strategies like perimeter control, medical inspection, and isolation and quarantine, were implemented, they started early and lasted for a long time. For example, the small mining town of Gunnison, Colorado, implemented measures from the moment influenza was reported in the state, early October, until January of the following year. This was certainly a long time for Gunnison residents to bid their time and avoid most social contact, something that was made much easier by the separation between homes and ranches, and the individualistic ethos that characterized the Rocky Mountain frontier.

Finally, they probably all had a good dose of luck. For example, the women's college Bryn Mawr, managed to escape the flu without any deaths, despite an infection rate of about 25%. The college president ordered all the stock measures of inspection, quarantine, and isolation, and was well-versed in the bacteriological and public health knowledge of the day, but there was still much traffic in and out of the campus. For example, mothers came to visit their daughters while in the infirmary and some athletic activities continued. Other college communities behaved in a similar manner, but only Bryn Mawr appears to have experienced no deaths during 1918.

This study was funded by the Defense Department, an agency I never expected to work with given my general attitude towards our military policies and antipathy towards the subsumption of public health under the biodefense umbrella. Yet the sponsors we worked with were some of the most intellectually open and interesting I have met. There was real interest in what lessons could be gleaned from our study to protect both men and women in uniform and civilians. Our sponsors were also eager to make all the data we collected available to the public, hence the creation of our digital archive.

In the end, the consensus was that the experiences of these seven "escape" communities were not easily applicable to the 21st century United States. They were too small, too anomalous, and offered little in the way of extrapolation to today's overwhelming urban society. We did conclude that protective sequestration could be recommended for certain sub-communities, such as nursing homes or boarding schools, in the advent of pandemic influenza of great magnitude in the future.

From the historian's perspective, the seven escape communities are fascinating examples of social, political, and public health experimentation during a time of real crisis. In my next post, I'll provide an annotated essay about online sources related to the 1918-1919 pandemic for all those interested in digging deeper into this chapter of our past.