San Francisco’s bubonic plague epidemic has eerie parallels to the age of COVID-19

Katie Dowd for the San Francisco Chronicle identifies parallels between the coronavirus pandemic and the spread of the bubonic plague in San Francisco in the early 1900s.

The plague of 1900–04 was centered on San Francisco’s Chinatown. It was the first plague epidemic in the continental United States. The epidemic was recognized by medical authorities in 1900, but its existence was denied for more than two years by California’s Governor Henry Gage. The failure to act quickly may have allowed the disease to spread. Federal authorities worked to prove that there was a major health problem, and they isolated the affected area.  Gage lost the governorship in the 1902 election. The new Governor George Pardee implemented a medical solution and the epidemic was stopped in 1904.

KJ