Is it right to control people’s actions during a pandemic?

Summary: In this lesson, your students will look at two documents from the smallpox and tuberculosis pandemics to investigate whether and when people’s actions should be controlled during a pandemic.

Start by presenting a summary of the introduction to your students, then follow the lesson instructions below.

Introduction

What is a pandemic?

It’s likely that your life recently changed due to something silent and invisible–a pandemic. A pandemic is a disease that does not impact just one area but spreads across the whole world. Did you have to stay home from school? Stand six feet away from your friends? Wear a mask in a store? This is because of the pandemic.

The coronavirus is a virus, or a germ that can make you sick. Some viruses have treatments that stop them from hurting people. Others don’t yet. Some viruses without treatment spread so quickly that they become pandemics.

Mainers have faced pandemics before. Pandemics come in different shapes and sizes depending on the type of virus. Sometimes, older people are most at risk. Sometimes it’s more dangerous for children. Different pandemics affect people in different ways, like coughing, fever, and difficulty walking. Pandemics are dangerous because they cause many deaths in a short period of time. They stop either naturally or when people find a cure.

Vocabulary below for teacher use.

Vocabulary:

• Pandemic: A disease that does not impact just one area, but spreads across the whole world.
• Virus: A germ that can get inside your body and make you sick.
• Vaccine: A shot that stops you from getting a virus.
• Sanatorium: A treatment facility for tuberculosis patients.

Read the text below to your students. Feel free to share the images in the introduction with your students. Ask what questions they have, and what more they would like to know. This will help prime them for the following primary source activity.

Smallpox

The global smallpox pandemic lasted from approximately the 1500s to the 1800s. Smallpox began with a fever and rash. The rash and its scabs easily got other people sick. The disease had a very high death rate of 30%. Those that survived were left with scars. Today, smallpox is completely gone.

Smallpox was brought to North America by European colonists. The disease heavily impacted Native peoples. In the first 100 years after Europeans arrived here, 80% of Wabanaki people died from smallpox and other European diseases. As terrible as it is to think about, many Europeans were glad that there were fewer Native Americans. It made it easier to move into the land that Native peoples once called home.

There are many reasons why pandemics had a bigger impact on Native peoples than on the European colonists. With colonists taking more and more land and resources, Wabanaki people faced poverty, hunger, and sickness. The location and number of Native tribes in the United States today was shaped by these deaths. Even today, Native people still suffer healthcare problems at rates 2 to 3 times higher than the rest of the U.S. population.

Smallpox also impacted colonists. During the Revolutionary War there was a bad smallpox outbreak. The disease was treated during this time by infecting people with a small amount of smallpox. That way their body would know how to fight the disease if they had a worse case. This idea came from an enslaved man named Onesimus who had been vaccinated this way in Africa. A smallpox vaccine was developed in 1798.

Tuberculosis

The global tuberculosis (TB) pandemic occurred during the 1800s and 1900s. TB was very dangerous and led to many deaths. Most people with TB had problems with their lungs and with breathing.

TB broke out in Maine in the first half of the 1900s. Patients were treated away from their homes in sanatoriums. Sanatoriums were located in places with lots of open space. Sanatoriums were also far away from other people so that patients didn’t get their friends and families sick. These patients were given special diets and lots of fresh air as treatment.

Some people had trouble affording the cost of their sanatorium stays. Maine had a few sanatoriums across the state, including the Western Maine Sanatorium. Tuberculosis patients moved into sanatoriums for sometimes long periods of time, like over a year. Sometimes patients left sanatoriums even when their doctors said they weren’t ready.

The Big Question: Is it right to control people’s actions during a pandemic?

Pandemics are scary for both people and governments. Sometimes people’s actions are limited to try to stop the spread of a pandemic. This has happened during the coronavirus pandemic. Closed schools, masks, and social distancing are all examples of limits you may have experienced.

This was also the case with smallpox and TB. In the smallpox pandemic, sick people’s things were burned and whole towns were vaccinated. People with TB had to live away from their loved ones. Look at these two sources from the smallpox and tuberculosis pandemics. What can they tell you about ways that people’s actions were controlled? How do you think this made people feel?

The Lesson:

1. Share the primary sources with students. They may complete an Analysis Worksheet for each one, using only information from the source itself. If they are not ready for analysis and writing, this can be completed as a class or small group.
2. Discuss the sources as a class. What did you learn from them? What questions do you have? How do the sources connect to the theme?
3. Present source label information to the students. Were you surprised by what you learned?
4. Optional: use the recommended activity prompts and reflection questions for further discussion.

Optional Activity

As a class, create a list of ways that people’s actions are being controlled or limited because of coronavirus. Come up with two good things and two bad things about each controlling action.

Reflection questions:

• Who gets to control people’s actions?
• Whose actions are controlled?
• What are some examples of times that people’s freedoms have been limited?
• Did it work?
• Who benefits from these limits and who suffers?
• When are limits helpful and when do they go too far?

Pandemic Primary Source Sets developed in collaboration between the Maine Historical Society, Maine State Archives, Maine State Library, and Maine State Museum.