On Nov. 2, 1918, Baltimore health commissioner Dr. John Blake removed the city’s closure order. Public schools were scheduled to reopen on Monday morning. When they did, attendance was lower than expected, attributed not to sick students but rather to cautious parents who kept their children home out of fear of illness.

Over the course of November, Baltimore continued to experience new cases of influenza, but in drastically lower numbers than during the height of the epidemic. Instead of hundreds of new cases reported each day, there were only handfuls.