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We're celebrating Thanksgiving amid a pandemic. Here's how we did it in 1918 ? and what happened next


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Thanksgiving 2020
the Thanksgiving Day
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World War I
Armistice Day
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Positivity     38.00%   
   Negativity   62.00%
The New York Times
SOURCE: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/11/21/covid-and-thanksgiving-how-we-celebrated-during-1918-flu-pandemic/6264231002/
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Summary

Many people refused to wear masks and were arrested, and when the "line into the courtroom was so long, they laid off arresting people because the system couldn’t enforce it," Markel said.But Nov. 13, the San Francisco Examiner reported that "Thanksgiving Day will be celebrated in San Francisco by the discarding of gauze masks, if the present rate of decrease in influenza continues."A week later, San Franciscans ceremoniously removed their masks as a whistle-blow sounded across the city at noon. Many Americans returned to religious services, performed charity work and went through with planned football games, parties and performances.In Portland, a "grand reunion service" was planned for the Sunday following Thanksgiving, "in honor of the reassembling after being debarred from worship on account of the epidemic for the last five weeks." Members of various congregations were "ready to greet each other after the long absence," according to the Oregon Daily Journal on Nov. 16."The chimes of church bells will once more be heard on Sunday morning throughout the city, beckoning one and all to attend their chosen place of worship, where a double celebration will be held, first over the suppression of autocracy and, second, over the eradication of a frightful plague," the paper wrote.Rabbis, priests, pastors and more conveyed a unified message at that time, Hutchinson said – one of "forgiveness and compassion.""People are urging to be considerate of one another, to care for one another," Hutchinson said. Both cities subsequently cracked down on public gatherings, limited the number of passengers on street cars and ordered those cars to be ventilated and cleaned.In Salt Lake City, residents were under "quarantine" on Thanksgiving, shops were prohibited from holding sales and celebrations were postponed until Christmas Day. Placards indicating households infected with influenza were placed on the front and rear entrances of 2,000 homes."Owing to the influenza quarantine, the day’s festivities . In Cincinnati, which was seeing a surge in cases among children and firemen, Thanksgiving "exercises" at school were held in auditoriums instead of classrooms to "avoid crowding," the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote Nov. 28.A handful of cities began to see a surge in cases on Thanksgiving itself.Cincinnati health officials "requested parents to forego children’s parties and gatherings during the Thanksgiving vacation," but the number of hospitalized patients rose on the holiday. The week of Thanksgiving, the number of flu cases at the city's General Hospital doubled, and, on Thanksgiving Day, city health officials reinstituted home quarantine for influenza victims and their families. While bacteria are much larger and can be viewed under a light microscope, viruses require an electron microscope, which was not yet invented in 1918, Markel said.The vaccines that researchers did develop did not stop an impending third wave of the flu.Just as cases rose after Armistice Day celebrations, they rose again following Thanksgiving.

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