The differences between the global response to the Great Flu Pandemic and today’s COVID-19 outbreak could not be more striking.
Edward A. "Doc" Rogers / Library Of Congress / AP Images
"We have just commemorated the centenary of the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918, which lasted only a few months but claimed 50 million to 100 million lives worldwide, including 675,000 in the United States. That pandemic remains a benchmark, and many commentators have rushed to compare it to the current coronavirus outbreak. What’s most striking about these comparisons, though, is not the similarities between the two episodes, but the distance that medicine has traveled in the intervening century. Whatever happens next, it won’t be a second 1918."
Article: The Coronavirus Is No 1918 Pandemic