The Town that Dodged the Spanish Flu Pandemic (Gunnison, Colorado) | Patrick Kelly

[@KhanaHatake]

"Stay informed and try not to die" is how I try to live my life.

[@cubuff2647]

I live in Gunnison and had heard of this like most have. But watching your video added some good context & information I was not aware of. When COVID hit even the Denver channels talked about what Gunnison did in 1918/1919. Your video was much more thorough!! Great work!!

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I appreciate the kind words! Your town showed me a good time. I loved High Alpine Brewery and Tributary Coffee on Main St

[@AllisterCaine]

How translated your town surviving so pandemic back then to covid? Hope this was kept like tradition and covid went over your heads just as well.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Huge thank you to the Gunnison Pioneer Museum for allowing me to dig through the archives and film on site! If you're ever in central Colorado, check them out! www.gunnisonpioneermuseum.com

[@StrongMed]

Another fantastic video! 100% agree that clear and honest communication is central to any public health intervention. Not trusting the public with the nuances and uncertainty of our current pandemic has contributed to the suboptimal response we've seen. Unfortunately, it's hard to imagine a major media outlet of today serving as the singular hero in a pandemic-related story.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I agree. It's hard to imagine a similar response from the media because in 2021, all media is global media. Every news outlet wants the biggest reach and widest audience. Gunnison's newspaper was able to relate the news to its audience *because* it was intentionally small. The writers knew their audience and could sympathize with them.

[@outsideofenough6466]

Since the birth of newspapers, they have withheld truth, outright lied, was biased, and reported opinion as fact. It’s still like that today. I teach my young students to to be weary and check things out before believing it. Something that is life and death by all standards should be reported truthfully. I applaud that town for honesty. Our recent experience is a good example of not believing everything you hear. We still haven’t learned a lesson about honest reporting.

[@MysticalEverglade]

Watched a few videos of yours, and I'm just astounded how underrated this channel is. With this level of quality and effort I'd expect a channel to at least have a million subs or more.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I appreciate that! A bunch of subscribers or not, I just like finding these stories and making videos 😎

[@Neiki98]

Man, I love your content and improvements in camera work and creativity. Nice shots and great structure, I can only agree with your conclusion that honest and unbiased communication is the key to handle a situation calm and serene, especially in a public threat like a pandemic. Huge respect to the editorial staff in charge of the gunnison news-Champion at his time.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I appreciate the kind words. Sadly, the News Champion closed down in 1932, but they were influential while they were around

[@joelb8653]

Your content just keeps improving. Thanks for what you do.

[@buthkoludom8th758]

Great video!

[@JulianOShea]

Loving some on-site filmmaking and archival work. Well done.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Thanks Julian. Much inspiration from your style of film making

[@coloradocamera]

Awesome video, I live in Gunnison

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Awesome! If you haven't been to the pioneer museum, it was worth stopping at. So much cool stuff there that I didn't show in the video

[@deanmcmanis4862]

Honest reporting hmmm. That's a concept lost in time. Still, it's a great lesson about what actually works with pandemics. And what doesn't. Thanks for actually going to Gunnison, Colorado. It adds a personal immediacy and connection to the story.

[@cericat]

Unfortunately true, certain folks really like spreading FUD, and one of the things that always leaps out at me about epidemics is the propaganda blaming other countries/ethnic groups for spreading diseases especially if they were the first hit.

[@alexwyman8380]

Super interesting. My family has been in the gunnison Valley for 140 years. I knew about this, but i never realized how big of a roll the new paper had in it

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Gunnison was a beautiful city, I really enjoyed my visit. The local pioneer museum was really kind to let me look at all their newspaper archives and letter collections

[@unesseah]

Hey, Patrick, I love your videos. I am watching you from Morocco 😊

[@TheHergeea]

Fantastic! Thank you. Also for identifying when you went into editorial? you are a hero. Funny how society hasn’t changed, we just have too many more options than one, honest newspaper.

[@blindedbliss]

Wait... The island in the middle of nowhere that enacted a quarantine for years during the pandemic was a military base? The Ekstra History episode failed to mention that.

[@bioZone101]

awesome on site filming 10/10

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I live for that BioZone blessing

[@Silverstar98121]

Interesting! I didn't know this. I spent my early life in Colorado. One thing that impresses me is the parallels between this pandemic and our current pandemic. Same arguments, weather, just the grippe, etc, etc.

[@meze2095]

love the fact how well researched your vids are and how clearly you laber your opinions and theories and such.

[@Joy-TheLazyCatLady2]

It's easier to gain trust of a smaller community than 330 million people. The bottom line is that there are just too many people and it is impossible to get that many people to all agree. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[@shanelmurray3448]

This pretty much mirrors the way New Zealand dealt with the latest COVID-19 Pandemic. After the first wave, the opposition started to try and undermine the response. Then by the time Omicron come about, the media were too. Thus the controls come off in the peak of the Omicron wave that saw a few people die (also NZ tried to vaccinate its way out too, which while it had great take up, led to great resentment). Your takeaway was exactly what was happening in New Zealand at the time. People became more fractious as the quality of the communication from the media started to dip. It seems the people fronting these things don't always seem to come out that well, despite the lives they save.

[@DS-gt1ft]

" How did they get the townspeople to buy into the quarantine?" Actual honest reporting.

[@johnstewart2011]

Thank you for a very interesting discussion. I have letters written by my father’s mother that made several references to the influenza and were written from October 1918 to January 1919 to a great uncle who was a soldier in France at the time. She was living in the town of Buena Vista, Colorado, and they mention the attempt at establishing an exclusionary quarantine to keep people out. The quarantine was evidently broken by a man who was originally denied entry to the town but then “slipped” in. If I understand the letters correctly, that man was blamed for introducing the flu to the town and there are subsequent references to people who died, although it’s not clear where some died. She mentioned the rumor that the man who broke the quarantine was fined $500 (over $10,000 in today’s dollars). My grandmother also mentioned that family members were vaccinated during the period, and that if the vaccine didn’t prevent the disease it supposedly lessened its severity.

[@rkim9955]

I have no idea how I went from making beer videos to here but this is some awesome content ! I'm hooked !!

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Haha! Much like Coors, this video is a taste of the Rockies, but from 100 years ago! Thanks for watching

[@mikesnyder1788]

This is why I love science! Shining the light amidst the darkness of ignorance and superstition!

[@renatoromano]

I liked this video, made with detail and nicy like always (thanks Patrick!) For commenters that try to make a link between Gunnison and 2021-2022 situation, I like to point some diferences: Quarantine, not lock-down - economy is a deadly factor too. A little city in middle of nowhere, not a modern cosmopolitan metro area. Without (?) know, Gannisthey used others cities to change the virus. Normaly firsts srain is more deadly and less transmissive, further strains are becoming less deadly and more transmissive - and was that less letal strain that finnaly arrived at Gunnison people.

[@fh5kskalf]

China and New Zealand's handling of the current pandemic comes to mind in this case. Very strict lockdowns and quarantines can obviously work at preventing the spread of pandemics, but the benefits obviously have to be weighed by the downsides (and not just the financial ones). If this pandemic had been as lethal as the 1918 one, harsh lockdowns/quarantines would have been way more widespread.

[@NocturnalDoom]

4:39 So like how Alberta has no rats 😬 And it all started in Kansas… funny how things get the wrong name 😅

[@blindedbliss]

This feels a lot like hearing about how New Zealand avoided most of the issues with COVID-19, whilst leaders like Borris and Trump played it all down and had the public pay their price.

[@13donstalos]

Trump appointed Fauci, and Fauci went balls deep for masks and vaccines, none of which helped. So idk man.

[@SuziesCornerInLove]

Interesting take considering Trump initiated the first border protection blocking air traffic from known carrier countries. Like presidents should be doing, he protected country's borders and left state govts to decide for themselves. This is constitutionally correct. Do you know of Operation Warpspeed? They were working on countering this planned war move arsenal since 2018.

[@terrimcleod7509]

Great information. It is what it is..its what worked to not spread the illness.

[@markmuller7962]

That's what a real man does, wear a mask, enforce a quarantine to protect his family and other families

[@pearlmanskitchen]

Love your videos!

[@mienaiknife]

"And while most of our non-pharmaceutical interventions are the same as back then, like masks and social distancing, the big differences is that pharmaceutical interventions are way better than they used to be" Our non-pharmaceutical interventions are also better than they used to be because of how air filtration technology has advanced in the past century. Now we have much higher quality masks like N95s and HEPA air filters. And we do need both pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions

[@waffles3629]

I think the lesson is that history repeats itself.

[@mariekatherine5238]

Vaccine for 1918 didn’t work because it was made for a bacteria that often, but not always was found in flu victims. They suspected the existence of viruses, but didn’t have the technology to isolate them. The only disadvantage to never getting this flu was that the people didn’t develop immunity to it. It’s possible, however, that someone may have had flu in the first, mild wave. Isolating yourself does work, however, unless it’s a disease that easily spreads through fomites.

[@snubbedpeer]

Honest communication about the facts and risks did most of the trick. A certain president promoting bleach comes to mind

[@andrewbrown6522]

Id love to see a genetic profile with medical records of reactions to later outbreaks of other bugs. Eg; how did this population and their offspring fair in later epidemics.

[@SuziesCornerInLove]

I'm curious if the silver processing is most likely the main reason the influenza didn't spread.

[@Idrinklight44]

Now we see why coof was a cluster f...

[@bryrusmi4001]

Then: So Geography and an Honest governing body coupled with a populaces Trust carried the day. Now:... ... pretty much a 180°😅

[@npsfam]

The message I got, is I should move to Gunnison CO. And hopefully avoid COVID...in all of its varients :)

[@myname4167]

i always said that if they had just shut down everything totally for 2 weeks it would have gone away

[@si_vis_amari_ama]

In the Covid-19 epidemic, were the citizens of Gunnison more amenable to wearing masks etc than comparative rural towns?

[@traianliviudanciu8665]

Did at Gunnison decrease fever with antipiretic? May be fever protect against viral replication?

[@robertbruce7686]

This video should be mandatory viewing for UK Hoyses of Parliament and Lords/ UK media sources. This from Uk citizen. Just saying. Funny how he in UK forgot Eyam and the Black Death

[@RED-cy7ig]

This community respected life not commerce and money. We do not see enough of that. Especially currently.

[@MikeHunt-fo3ow]

wouldnt the black death be the worst pandemic?

[@PatKellyTeaches]

It's a close call that depends on how you define pandemics versus epidemics. I defined pandemic as a global disease outbreak, whi,e epidemics are widespread but not global. Since the 14th century Black Death wasn't documented in the Americas or Australia, it doesn't meet my definition of a pandemic.

[@MikeHunt-fo3ow]

they were pretty much isolated back then though right? The vikings were goofing around in canada at that time though i think.......i wonder if bigfoot can get human plagues lol@@PatKellyTeaches

[@davidguest5795]

Where in Colorado is "Saleeta?"

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Salida, CO

[@MB-nn3jw]

An allegory.

[@adivrsity]

Your channel is awesome. Here is the issue. People don't want the truth, they don't want medical info that tells them it's hard and takes knowledge and training. They want a Guru to tell them if they think really hard and eat a special water or pull they will be better, and let their privilege prove them right.

[@scoon2117]

303!!!

[@Filipe_Veras]

Luck is also a huge factor here. Maybe the biggest

[@C.O._Jones]

The lesson I get is that draconian measures work. Therefore, if you have a noncompliant population, you must enforce compliance by severe means.

[@ryanthon10]

Must have missed the parts about honest communication and the gov/media lying to support the war effort

[@kennithminnich]

Didnt work in China, where entire cities were locked down. Supposedly, peoplestarved to death.

[@simoncaron6424]

Ok fascist

[@C.O._Jones]

@@simoncaron6424 Learn what a word means before you use it, simpleton. I’d greatly enjoy forcing compliance on you.

[@SuziesCornerInLove]

Most likely it was the silver production that kept the critters at bay.

[@JosephNine]

IF YOU (FEEL) THAT NOT LETTING ANY SICK PEOPLE INTO THE TOWN, DID NOT HELP THE OBVIOUS, I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO TELL YOU ?