re: #214 Anymouse 🌹🎃

Back in the early 1980s, when I went to university, the pandemic of 1918-1919 had been pretty much forgotten. One of the few scholars was historian Alfred Crosby, who taught at my alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, and wrote a book called “America’s Forgotten Pandemic.”

People know more about pandemics today than they did four decades ago, and about the 1918-1919 flu, we know quite a lot. Scientists have even exhumed bodies buried in Alaskan permafrost to collect samples of the virus. But we still don’t know the source—it’s been alternately speculated to have been France, Kansas (Crosby), or China. The 1918-1919 pandemic is known to be an H1N1 virus with possible avian origins.

I have a bad feeling we may be looking at another awful pandemic.

Oh, there’s a science fiction novel called “The Doomsday Book” by Connie Willis. It’s a time travel novel but in the background is a massive killing pandemic in the present (2054-2055) day.