Letter to the Editor - Social distancing only way to slow spread of virus

Editor,

In response to the Hill County commissioner who recently questioned if social distancing is in fact the reason for Hill County’s low COVID-19 positivity rate to date, and acknowledging her responsiveness to the questions brought to her by her constituents, I offer her a medical history lesson.

During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic — that incidentally killed a third of the world’s population over a two year time span — St. Louis and Philadelphia took two opposite approaches to social distancing.

To boost morale for WWI and sell war bonds, Philly threw a parade attracting 200,000 people. Within days, their hospitals were full of sick and dying people from the flu and within a week 4,500 people had died.

By contrast, St. Louis, after detecting their first case of the Spanish flu, enacted lockdowns and social distancing similar to those we now have in place. These restrictions lead to an eventual death rate in St. Louis literally half which occurred in Philly.

Let us not “repeat history” in a negative way — social distancing works and currently is our only major line of defense against this virus.

Mark R. Miles, MD

OB/GYN physician at Northern Montana Hospital, Havre