KNOXVILLE FLASHBACK: THE SPANISH FLU: HOW 1918 WAS THE SAME, BUT VERY DIFFERENT. “Knoxville had once been considered an especially dense city, even by standards of the day. The city had just begun suburbanizing, as symbolized by its recent annexations. But numbers from the era indicate that people who lived in Knoxville proper lived much closer together than we do today, with a density more than twice of what we’re used to. That density is what made the city seem fun, in descriptions from the era. Even in prohibition, the theaters and poolhalls and dancehalls and cafes, all of them within walking distance of thousands of residents, made Knoxville an exciting place to be, at almost every hour of the day. But density also helped the virus spread. Later state records suggest that relatively few country people got sick. . . . By Oct. 21, it was remarked: downtown looked like a ‘ghost town.’ That phrase seems inevitable today, already used frequently to describe downtown in a strange month in 2020. It’s surprising to see it in 1918, when the term was uncommon. According to the Encyclopedia of American Urban History, the phrase ‘ghost town’ became popular in the mid-1920s. Either the unnamed reporter made it up or borrowed it from a recent novel or magazine article about the Wild West.”

Density kills.