What Can We Learn From the 1918 Pandemic?

Seattle policemen wear white cloth face masks during the Spanish flu pandemic, Dec. 1918. Public Domain

This article is about the 1918 flu and the mythology that surrounds it. It is about mask mandates, aspirin overdoses as a possible cause of death, and fascinating historical parallels.

When it comes to history, we are dependent on the “expert opinion.” History is usually written by the winners and shaped in real time to match the narrative that helps the winners sell their current point of view—and that is the reason why it is so fascinating to discover facts and hypotheses that go against the grain, such as the hypothesis about aspirin poisoning killing potentially a large number of people during the 1918 pandemic.

The History of the 1918 Pandemic

The influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919 is considered to be “the most deadly flu outbreak in history.” It is estimated that the Spanish flu pandemic killed 20 to 50 million people worldwide, including around 675,000 Americans (that’s according to the CDC; historical data is limited). The Census Bureau estimates that in 1918, the US population was just above 103 million people.