Colloquium: Pandemics’ Reprisals: The U-shaped Pattern of Suffering for Effective Policy Measures

How do major health crises resonate in health behavior and in the perception of health measures and future-oriented policies? We study the effects of the largest adverse health shock that occurred in the setting of modern medicine—the 1918 influenza pandemic—on subsequent shifts in vaccination behavior and health-policy statements using self-digitized individual-level death register excerpts, vaccination records, and popular vote counts. More influenza-affected localities reduce vaccination rates, dislike state-induced health measures, and refuse education and technology reforms, while there are no such differences before the pandemic. The effects are mostly driven by dead peers. On the contrary, individual-level data reveal increased vaccination rates with influenza deaths within the family. Our findings point to a U-shaped pattern of suffering for effective (health-)policy measures and suggest that the increase in life expectancy is not driven by societal learning from similar pandemics during the last centuries.