Spanish Flu

By Amit KapoorThe Indian experience of the deadly Spanish flu of 1918 shows how pandemics interact with social divide across communities. A ship carrying Indian troops reached the shores of Bombay on the 29th day of May in 1918. It remained anchored to the city’s docks for about 48 hours.…

Three disease experts told Business Insider that they weren't shocked by the emergence of a contagious new strain of coronavirus. They said the biggest surprise has been the "lack of coordinated public-health response" in the US, which led to a shortage of tests and an incomplete patchwork of shelter-in-place orders.Officials should…

1918 Flu Pandemic depressed the economy, but public health interventions did not. Dots represent city-level 1918 influenza mortality and manufacturing employment growth around the 1918 Flu Pandemic. Green (red) dots are cities with non-pharmaceutical intervention days above (below) the median fall 1918. About the lockdowns now affecting 75% of Americans:…

Philadelphia and St. Louis were both hit by the flu outbreak of 1918-19, but one city suffered a death rate of approximately 358 per 100,000 people, whereas the other suffered 748 deaths per 100,000.1918 was a very different time from today, but there are still lessons that we can draw…

Leaders invoking battle terminology to galvanize national action risk achieving the opposite. Yasmeen Serhan March 31, 2020 Paul Spella / The AtlanticIf curbing the spread of the coronavirus is akin to being “at war,” then it is unlike any war the world has ever fought.Still, the irregularity of this particular…

March 30, 2020 AT 3:00 pm Get educated on how past public health crises have shaped NYC history. Great quarantine content from The Bowery Boys: New York City History Podcast.The COVID-19 outbreak has gotten many people to look back at the handling of past outbreaks in the United States —…

A 101-year-old Italian man has reportedly made history after he contracted — and survived — COVID-19. The man, only identified as Mr. P, was recently discharged from a hospital in Rimini following a battle with the contagious illness, the city’s Vice Mayor Gloria Lisi told Italian news agency ANSA. Get…

As governments and societies across the world struggle with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and scientists look to modelling to see how various approaches might impact the worldwide trajectory of the virus, some observers are drawing comparisons to another pandemic that happened over a century ago. The so-called Spanish flu of…

Published on Mar 27, 2020COVID-19 is the biggest pandemic the world has faced since the Spanish flu. Here is how you can save lives: Social distancing. Hospitals only have a certain capacity to hold a number of sick people at any given time. If this number goes overcapacity, many more…

1. Some mask production is being deregulated. 2. “Using country-, subnational-, and individual-level data, we show that Facebook has had a significant and sizable positive impact on citizen protests.” 3. Open source ventilators? 4. Automated contact tracing without giving up privacy?  And explanation. 5. What the SuperForecasters think. 6. A…