@variablepulserate There were definitely restrictions, but they were late and the messaging kept being “nope definitely not a public health emergency, please move on” in most places. The disinformation had interesting effects, apparently.
Not knowing whom or what to believe, people also lost trust in one another. They became alienated, isolated. Intimacy was destroyed. “You had no school life, you had no church life, you had nothing,” a survivor recalled. “People were afraid to kiss one another, people were afraid to eat with one another.” Some people actually starved to death because no one would deliver food to them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-1918-spanish-flu.html
/@matigo @phoneboy