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Dr. Barbara Rosencrantz on: An Enormous Panic
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The picture one gets primarily from the influenza epidemic in terms of these same areas where the innocent and the guilty were targeted for other diseases, is of confusion. The fact that influenza hit a population of young, apparently healthy people, primarily at first young soldiers, I think confused the public reaction to the disease. There was an enormous panic. But the panic is, I think, in part, the sense that we can't target the cause, we can't identify the individual with disease as we could in some other instances. If you compare the view of the dangers of tuberculosis and the dangers of influenza, they're strikingly different in the public eye in that period.

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