By mid-September, the Spanish flu was spreading like wildfire through army and naval installations in Philadelphia, but Wilmer Krusen, Philadelphia’s public health director, assured the public that the stricken soldiers were only suffering from the old-fashioned seasonal flu and it would be contained before infecting the civilian population. As civilian infection rates climbed day by day, Krusen refused to cancel the upcoming Liberty Loan parade scheduled for September 28. Krusen insisted that the parade must go on, since it would raise millions of dollars in war bonds, and he played down the danger of spreading the disease. Just 72 hours after the parade, all 31 of Philadelphia’s hospitals were full and 2,600 people were dead by the end of the week. The public health response in St. Louis couldn’t have been more different. Even before the first case of Spanish flu had been reported in the city, health commissioner Dr. Max Starkloff had local physicians on high alert and wrote an editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the importance of avoiding crowds. When a flu outbreak at a nearby military barracks first spread into the St. Louis civilian population, Starkloff wasted no time closing the schools, shuttering movie theaters and pool halls, and banning all public gatherings. There was pushback from business owners, but Starkloff and the mayor held their ground. Dehner says that because of these precautions, St. Louis public health officials were able to “flatten the curve” and keep the flu epidemic from exploding overnight as it did in Philadelphia.
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-pandemic-response-cities