Making Contact
May 21, 2020: Lessons from the Spanish Flu
In 1918, humanity faced a deadly global pandemic– the Spanish Flu. The CDC estimates that the disease killed at least 50 million people, and infected a third of the worlds population.
Today, handwashing and physical distancing are a part of daily life, as are grim tallies of the sick and the dead.
Even though science has made tremendous advances since then, our methods for slowing the spread of the novel Coronavirus are very similar to those used 100 years ago.
Within the social and political climate of 1918, we will examine how the people who lived a century before us responded to the crisis of a global pandemic. There were important and encouraging lessons to be learned then about prevention and readiness, as there are today from COVID-19.
Featuring:
Laura Spinney, science journalist and author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World.