Blog Post #7 The Ramifications of my Hypothesis that Teddy Roosevelt Died of the 1918 Flu

The United States failed spectacularly in its response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, due to a lack
of political leadership. A similar lack of leadership happened during the last global pandemic in
1918, when an outbreak of bird flu occurred during WWI. We know the effect the pandemic had
on the public; less well-understood is the effect the pandemic had on American politics and
international affairs. Not only did the virus incapacitate President Woodrow Wilson, causing him
to concede to French Premier Georges Clemenceau on the Versaille Treaty and setting up the
perfect political and economic conditions for Hitler’s rise, I hypothesize it also caused the death
of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt became ill after his son Quentin died in combat in France in the summer of
1918, just after the first wave of the pandemic. Then on January 6, 1919, during the third wave,
his butler woke up to the former President’s labored breathing, and watched as he passed away.
His doctors suspected a coronary embolism.

In hindsight, the route to his death was clear. Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly child, with asthma
so severe his attacks would keep him up all night as he fought for breath. He mostly grew out of
it, but it would affect him from time to time in adolescence and adulthood. That was his first
co-morbidity. He then went to fight in the Spanish-American War and contracted malaria; his
second co-morbidity. His other co-morbidities happened when he explored the Amazon
rainforest’s “River of Doubt” and became ill with a tropical disease on the trek. His group of
explorers also ran out of food and he sliced open his leg, a wound that would plague him the rest
of his life. As he aged he developed rheumatoid arthritis, like asthma a disease of the immune
system. Plus, he was shot in the chest and was involved in a nasty streetcar accident. By the time
the pandemic came along, he was in bad shape.

Though his official cause of death was a coronary embolism, I believe it was brought on by the
1918 flu. Ironically, this hypothesis is impossible to prove given Woodrow Wilson’s ineffective
management of the pandemic. He wanted to keep Americans focused on the war. Like most
nations involved in the war, the U.S. didn’t want to admit weakness and didn’t report the death
toll. But in fact, there was a spike in heart conditions that began after the pandemic dissipated.
Some say that the rise in heart conditions cannot be traced to this virus. However, when a person
was infected with the bird flu virus, it hit every organ system (like the coronavirus) and caused
an equivalent of long covid in some people.

These major effects of the flu eventually hit Woodrow Wilson as well. He came down with the
flu on April 3rd, 1919 and had a massive stroke in October 1919. While there is evidence of a
prior cerebrovascular disorder, the virus certainly could have exacerbated his medical issues.

It’s interesting to wonder what would have happened if Theodore Roosevelt, who was about to
run for his third term as president, hadn’t died in 1919. Would the Republican Party and the
country have been better off? After all, Warren G. Harding, who won the 1920 presidential
election, was so incompetent he let his treasury secretary Andrew Mellon push massive tax cuts
for the wealthy through Congress (what Heather Cox Richardson deems an older version of
trickle-down economics), dramatically raising income inequality and setting the stage for the
Great Depression. Moreover, if the authoritatively engaged Theodore had been in the White
House, America would likely have played a larger role on the international stage and may have
prevented the League of Nations from collapsing. Or would it just have given Teddy a chance to
be more imperialist?

Whatever the effect of a third term for the famous Rough Rider, it’s unwise for the American
public to forget the lessons of our modern pandemic. The majority of the world is still not
protecting biodiversity and natural spaces, which are barriers to zoonotic spillover (when viruses
jump from animals to humans). We must do better and keep in mind how dangerous pandemics
make the world. They don’t just kill people, they destabilize countries and world affairs, as we’re
seeing now and as we saw then.