Before Covid-19 arrived, you may have heard of the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1920, but probably would not have paid it much mind. In the West, the focus of history books about this period is generally on the First World War. World War I killed an estimated 17 million people and that is by anyone’s count a horrendous waste of life. In comparison however, the Spanish flu pandemic killed anywhere between 50 to 100 million people worldwide. 50 to 100 million. That’s likely more than World War I and World War II put together. It was the greatest tidal wave of death since the Black Death, possibly even the greatest in human history. It affected every corner of the globe. In every continent apart from Europe more people died of the flu than from war. However, somehow the importance of this global catastrophe has until recently been only a footnote, at least in Western history textbooks. Why is this?
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