It still has the ‘not as bad as the flu’ ring to it that many spout.....and they’re talking about the modern flu strains, not the ‘Spanish’ flu.
Around 600-700k Americans died from the 1918 pandemic, and they got off pretty lightly compared to some countries. It’s not inconceivable that a similar number will die from covid, and that’s with the benefit of modern medicine, infection control and a pending vaccine.
The elephant in the room is that the US did fuck all about it...because partisan politics, stupidity, freedom and Murica.
At least as I see it.
we‘ll likely not have another spanish flu episode, we have 100yrs of immunity and vaccinations behind us..was cuased by the h1n1 variation, of which i think we have had another one was late 2000’s, maybe 09
but yes spanish flu was much worse than sars-cov2, not in the same league..it killed many soldiers , young fit healthy guys, albeit some had been undernourished for a couple of yrs due to the war, spanish flu had no testing but estimates put worldwide infection rate somewhere between 25-35% of the population at the time
a couple of towns in the US midwest did avoid spanish flu altogether, they decided ona local scale to isolate, probably much easier back then
you have to remember world travel wasn’t anything like it is today, even cars/shopping malls/mixing of cultures was nothing like today - yet spanish flu still devastated
if, and it’s a big if but if we had a serious mutation of influenza, different to the yr’ly variation i would be isolating for close to 2 yrs, anyone who gets it could drop dead, sars-cov2 has not shown this, yes i know some young people have died, but they all have some underlying condition, havn’t seen evidence to the contrary