George Washington Ben Drankin 4th of July Independence shirt

The plan the president proposed for venturing back out so soon after the worst of the epidemic worried his advisers. If he followed such a course, they warned, he would go against the instructions of doctors and, worse, give fellow citizens license to do the same. In search of parallels to the coronavirus, much has been written about the yellow-fever epidemic that chased the fledgling federal government from its then-capital of Philadelphia in the summer and fall of 1793.