Throwback Thursday | The 1918 Influenza Pandemic

By Katherine Schulten

As scientists confront the Ebola crisis, @NYTarchives has been tweeting historical articles about how the world dealt with the influenza pandemic of 1918.

What lessons can we learn from past outbreaks in controlling epidemics today? Below are some resources to help.

Resources and Ideas

Victims of the 1918 influenza outbreak in Kansas. National Museum of Health and Science

First, don’t panic about Ebola, but do take common-sense steps to protect yourself from health risks in general.

In “Experts Offer Steps for Avoiding Public Hysteria, a Different Contagious Threat,” Benedict Carey writes:

The risk of Ebola infection remains vanishingly small in this country. The virus is not airborne, not able to travel in the way that, say, measles or the SARS virus can. …

By contrast, in some years, the flu kills more than 30,000 people in the United States. Yet this causes little anxiety: Millions of people who could benefit from a flu shot do not get one.

The Op-Ed columnist Frank Bruni says much the same in “Scarier Than Ebola”:

Do me a favor. Turn away from the ceaseless media coverage of Ebola in Texas — the interviews with the Dallas nurse’s neighbors, the hand-wringing over her pooch, the instructions on protective medical gear — and answer this: Have you had your flu shot? Are you planning on one?

Here are some more resources related to Ebola, the 1918 influenza pandemic and the flu in general:

To find out what else happened on this day — or any day in history — visit our On This Day index or follow @NYTarchives on Twitter.

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Angela C October 20, 2014 · 9:50 pm

I think this article is very important to many young and old people because this contrasts the healthy and non- healthy people because if you relate back to the flu info, most people get sick because they aren’t clean enough and get infected easily. It also gives hope to many of us out in the world that there is a cure to Ebola. Stay strong everyone. There is always a way to fight this !!!