Archiving the Pandemic

CES (com)vida 2020

What the 1918 flu pandemic tells us about whether social distancing works

Nancy K Bristow

The Guardian

Overview

Retelling the history of pandemics from the past can lead to the recovery of experiences necessary to face the current challenges. In this article, and bearing in mind this present time in which several countries are testing deconfinement measures and social reopening in co-existence with covid-19, Nancy Bristow makes a historical analysis of the Spanish flu pandemic at the beginning in the USA in 1918 to compare the impacts that different measures of confinement and social distancancing have had in Seattle and Philadelphia.