The 1918 flu is not a perfect comparison point for COVID-19. For one thing, flus are different from coronaviruses. For another, disease knowledge and infrastructure in the teens was far behind where it is now. Scientists in 1918 had never actually laid eyes on a virus up close. That’s not to mention the existence of World War I in 1918, or the fact that while COVID-19 has generally been shown to be more deadly in older adults, the people most vulnerable to the 1918 flu were ages 20 to 40. But the 1918 flu is also the last time large swaths of Americans found themselves quarantined because of a pandemic, and an analysis of contemporaneous newspaper accounts reveals that #QuarantineLife in 1918 was just as mundane and arbitrary—and occasionally surreal—as it is now.
Lockdown in 1918 did, of course, have different rules than lockdown today. Even in those cities that took the most decisive action—St. Louis was warning residents to avoid crowds before the virus had even reached the city—some basic tenets differed. For instance: To the chagrin of those suffering Salt Lake City actors, not all cities closed their theaters. In Hamilton, Montana, local policy allowed movie theaters to stay in business as long as customers left a seat between each other.
Bookstores also sometimes remained open, and they reported massive spikes in customers. According to the Wichita Daily Eagle, “Wichita book stores are enjoying excellent trade in magazines.” As soon as a new issue of a popular magazine published, customers raced to snatch it off the stands. One good case study is Decatur, Illinois. During the lockdown, the city of Decatur was reeling; when “even parties of the most informal sort were called off,” Illinoisans “were thrown upon their own resources for amusement.” Public dinners were “out of the question” for the simple reason that “it’s hard to eat wearing [a] ‘flu’ mask.” So residents turned to magazine stands. One local dealer reported to the Decatur Herald & Review that he was constantly sold out, leading the newspaper to conclude that “if the quarantine last[s] much longer, the magazine and fireside habit will have such a hold that it will be hard to break.”
That gave advertisers a venue to hawk their products despite the sudden halt of most social life. In early November, an Iowa candy store ran a photo of a woman in heels and a cloche hat and asked, “All dressed up but no place to go?” The store directed customers instead to “just stay home” (sound familiar?) and “pass the time away with a nice box of candy.” Other companies rolled out “Pass Time Puzzles” to keep kids occupied during the pandemic. (So far, with COVID-19, the opposite has proven true: The advertising market has bottomed out, and magazines and publishers are facing layoffs and pay cuts in record numbers.)