[3] Following news of the disease reaching Philadelphia, many local physicians were wary of the dangers of holding the parade.

However, Dr. Wilmer Krusen, the director of Philadelphia's Department of Health and Charities, allowed the parade to be held.

[4] Only nine days after the Spanish flu had arrived in Philadelphia, more than 200,000 Philadelphians (20 times greater than the projected attendance) flocked to see the parade.

[9][10] In response to the outbreak, Klumer requested that the US Army stop drafting doctors in Philadelphia, allocate funds to hire more medical professionals and mobilize the sanitation department to clean the city and remove bodies from the street.

Still, hospitals were unable to treat every infected patient, especially because much of Philadelphia's medical staff was serving the United States overseas in World War I.

More than 1,000 bodies lay unburied, which forced the coroner of Philadelphia, William R. Knight Jr., to urge those who were healthy to serve as gravediggers.

However, in 2019, the Mütter Museum opened an exhibition called "Spit Spreads Death: The Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 in Philadelphia."

[17] Today, The Center for Disease Control's Division of Global Migration and Quarantine uses the Philadelphia Liberty Loans Parade as an example of how not to handle a pandemic.