Name: America's Forgotten Pandemic
ISBN: 9780521385473

America's Forgotten Pandemic

"Between August 1918 and March 1919 the Spanish influenza spread worldwide, claiming at least 30 million lives, more people than perished in the fighting of the First World War. It proved fatal to at least a half-million Americans. Yet, the Spanish flu pandemic is largely forgotten today. In this vivid narrative, Alfred W. Crosby recounts the course of the pandemic during the panic-stricken months of 1918 and 1919, measures its impact on American society, and probes the curious loss of national memory of this cataclysmic event." "In this new edition, with a new preface discussing the recent outbreaks of diseases, including the Asian flu and SARS, America's Forgotten Pandemic remains both prescient and relevant."--Jacket.

What Hacker News says

fragmedeMay 2020

There wasn't Twitter or Facebook in 1918, but the 1918 flu pandemic was headline news in every major newspaper. There were massive shutdowns and ordinances to require mask-wearing were enacted. Parts of the US came to a standstill. That we've forgotten about all of that says more to our biases and the quality of our education system, rather than lack of precedent.

There are many lessons to be learned from 1918, despite all the changes since then. Probably the most relevant one is just how forgotten it had become. If we manage to develop and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine, a few years from now we'll reminisce: remember 2020? Gosh, how weird that was!

There are other lessons too. Like that social distancing works.

Or that rushing to lift restrictions too soon just leads to outbreaks.

America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918, by Alfred W. Crosby is on Kindle and is interesting reading.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E3UR4EI/

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WesleyLivesayJan 2020

Yes, this was a big reason why it was initially named the Spanish Flu. At the time that it began (with the war still on) Spain was one of the few countries that did not have very stringent press censorship in place.

This is discussed in several sources, but this is the one I had most readily available:

"In a month or two everyone outside of Spain was calling it "Spanish influenza," not because it originated there, but probably because Spain, still a nonbelligerent, had no wartime censorship to keep its health problems secret from the world. An estimated eight million Spaniards caught flu in May and June. The Spanish claimed that it had come from the battlefields of France, blown over by the strong winter winds, and that it would have been even worse but for the snowy Pyrenees."

America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 by Alfred W. Crosby

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