One signficant difference is the belief back in 1918 that access to fresh air was important - the result was that hospital wards of that time were designed for lots of airflow, with high ceilings and large windows, it was also a very frequent practice in infectious isolation hospitals - sanatariums - to either have windows open all day or to have many patients located in marquees on the hospital grounds.
This is something that we have lost to a large degree - the demands of air-conditioning works against having access to outside air and far more use of recirculated air.
We now know that with Covid 19 that infection is far more likely in closed environments, and you can go online and see animations of the effect of virus spread in various indoor spaces such as offices.
Also worth noting, infection control was a lot more rigorous than you’ll see in todays hospitals - I have worked in hospitals in maintenance and chatted with many other staff - as maintenance folk are wont to do - and its clear that cleanliness standards are way lower, things such as only being allowed to wear your hospital work clothing in the hospital and absolutely nowhere else.
In 1918 they would also have had carbonic acid misting systems, in the UK the bean counters got in and sold off cleaning services, leading to an horrendous outbreak of MRSA along with other infections - due to the way the work/time tasks were managed on price - most were eventually taken back into the NHS, but the overall result was that infection control became disjointed and disconnected - in 1918 infection conrtol was not an add-on to the hospital, it was fundamental to its activities.
I know former nurses who were working in our NHS in the 1950’s who are appalled at the drop in infection control standards.
I think that hospitals would have coped better than we might imagine - but its worth remembering that lives were shorter, some infectious diseases were more common, however back then 'flu was feared - we became complacent.
It’s worth noting that there were no vaccines then for ‘childhood’ illnesses like measles, mumps, chickenpox, whooping cough, etc. So quarantine was more routine than it is now.
A child who got one of those infectious illnesses would be quarantined, but other children without symptoms who had been in close proximity to them might also be quarantined until it was clear if they had got it or not.
See the 1930’s novel Winter Holiday by Arthur Ransome (part of the Swallows & Amazons series) where most of the book revolves around quarantine. It’s public domain in Canada, South Africa, and several other countries.
It’s well worth reading on it’s own merits apart from that - also for a child who clearly has Aspergers/high-functioning ASD, before the condition was even known.
Yeah, I don’t think things would have been better back then, just different.
There was a lot of ignorance about how diseases spread, how they were prevented, etc… and communicable diseases were a lot more common, so it’s possible that people were somewhat less freaked out by a disease outbreak than today’s populace.
But there was no work-from-home back then, and no concept of shutting the schools for an extended period; people would have just worked through it and taken their chances. And that would have been the case as recently as even say… 2008. Everyone would have masked up, stayed apart and gone about their business in a minimal fashion, because there wasn’t any other option, unlike today with all the internet ordering, curbside pickup and working-from-home.
There was also a different conception of sickness and death; ISTR reading an article about how death in the Western world has changed from basically someone getting sick, and either living through it, or being dead in a matter of a few weeks, to something that is drawn out and protracted through modern medicine. So maybe people were more fatalistic about it- if the COVID didn’t get you, the flu, whooping cough, pneumonia, or a heart attack would when it was your time.