To the editor:

Adirondack residents are always fortunate to have the Daily Enterprise help meet our vital information needs, but never more so than in this time of pandemic and shutdown. The ADE not only keeps us aware of our communities’ struggles and resources as we encounter our own local challenges, but it provides us with important perspectives from the larger world in both geographic space and historical time.

George Bryjak’s May 1 Guest Commentary, “History sends a warning,” about the 1918 influenza pandemic was both fascinating and chilling. I won’t soon forget his quoted descriptions of the horrible and fatal passage of the influenza through its victims, or of why the second influenza wave was so much deadlier than the first. Nor will I forget learning of the tragic fate of children who actually survived the disease in remote Eskimo villages.

Another important local information resource, North Country Public Radio, on the May 1 “Science Friday” show (which can be streamed from ncpr.org under “programs”), had an interview with the historian Catherine Arnold, author of “Pandemic of 1918: Eyewitness Accounts of the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History.” Arnold described how the city of Manchester, England, seemed to have the second wave under control in the fall of 1918. But on the day the Armistice ending World War I was signed, its citizens, understandably, demanded the right to have a mass rally in celebration. Against the advice of public health authorities, city officials allowed it. Thousands came and cheered. Within a week, the influenza claimed the lives of more than 300 of them. A few months later, in the U.S., San Francisco saw the rise of an “Anti-Mask” movement demanding that mask-wearing and other restrictions be lifted. Once again, authorities relented, and once again, the death rate spiked. San Francisco ended up with one of the highest death rates of American cities from that pandemic.

The historian John Toland once wrote, “History never repeats itself, but human nature always does.” I can’t help but believe that knowing something about how human nature makes history might better help us survive, cope and recover in this strange and awful time.

When I was teaching, every year at least one student would ask me, “Mr. Newton, why do we have to learn history?” Today, in 2020, my answer would be “Because it might save your life.”

Phil Newton

Saranac Lake