Between forgetting and remembering: the flu pandemic of 1918-1919 in the time of covid-19

Abstract

Between forgetting and rememberingThe so-called Spanish flu was a traumatic experience for the population as a whole, and a challenge for medicine and health professionals, with an impact which lasted beyond the years of the pandemic. It played a decisive role in promoting the establishment of the World Health Organization Influenza Control Programme, supported by the creation of the World Influenza Centre (London) and a network of regional and national laboratories to deal with it. This network, a model for other pathologies (Porras Gallo, 2020), is still the key to monitoring the circulation of influenza viruses, detecting relevant changes, and deciding the composition of annual influenza vaccines. However, the interest of historians in this pandemic is relatively recent. It was overshadowed by the attention given to the First World War, acquired prominence during certain subsequent health crises and, above all, with the emergence of aids and the questioning of the end of infectious diseases.Works published since the late 1970s gave way in the 1990s to an increasing number of studies from a variety of viewpoints, on the development of this pandemic, responses to it, and its subsequent impact in different geographical locations. Its 80th anniversary prompted seminars reflecting on the historical aspects of the event, which were repeated 10 years later and again on the centenary, giving rise to several joint books (Phillips, Killingray, 2003; Sobral et al., 2009; Porras-Gallo, Davis, 2014). These meetings and the contributions contained in the books have made it possible to broaden the sources used and the frames of reference, to consolidate new research formats, to see the historiographical and conceptual evolution of the study of the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, and to demonstrate the complexity of the events and their status as a global social crisis. This book (Beiner, 2021) helps to enrich the existing literature with a compilation of essays that seek to clarify the discrepancy between the magnitude of the 1918-1919 influenza Between forgetting and remembering: the flu pandemic of 1918-1919 in the time of covid-19