I don’t really remember learning about the Spanish Flu of 1918, even though it was the world’s most recent large pandemic. Since the world did not the modern healthcare treatments to deal with the flu, the average life expectancy for young people went down exponentially by decades. Many doctors at the time of the Spanish Flu over prescribed aspirin, which led to poisoning, but that did not stop other people from continuing to take lethal doses as well from the fear of the pandemic. We are currently in a pandemic right now and quite frankly it is kind of concerning to see all the similarities between these two pandemics.
As a society we should have learned from the Spanish Flu of 1918, but apparently we did not since we are repeating some of the same mistakes from all those years ago. For example in misinformation really did not help the situation way back then, and now we are suffering from misinformation from scientific leaders in a rushed attempt to give the people information about the virus. In Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, parallels between the two pandemics were shown. The video also proved how current administration is failing to address the same problems from 1918 as well as failing to flatten the curve. While the reading simply informs us about the Spanish Flu of 1918 and how deadly it truly was to the people at the time.
I also did not learn about the Spanish Flu of 1918. It’s not something commonly taught in school, which I find odd. One would think that since it was quite a big deal, it would be taught about, which makes you wonder how COVID will be taught about.
I was also surprised by how little I knew about the Spanish flu before this lesson. I feel like we should know far more about such a widespread pandemic. What shocked me was that the pandemic killed more people than WWI, but I feel like we forget to mention it, or purposely we leave it out of certain versions of history
I also find it very interesting how many of the same mistakes we are making. This is a great example of why it is important to learn history. History will repeat itself if we do not learn from our mistakes. Hopefully, the United States Administration will step up and not have large gatherings like in 1918 soon after the pandemic begins to fade.
I find it fascinating that although we are facing a similar pandemic to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic we have not learned from the mistakes and our leaders have again failed to control this pandemic. I am also shocked to see that despite the historical evidence of how deadly these pandemics were, people are still ignoring safety precautions and risking so many lives.