Holly Richardson: The lessons of 1918. Will we learn them?

In the spring of 1918, influenza hit the United States, beginning, later historians would theorize, in a small town in Kansas and spreading through military barracks and then via troops to the battlefields of Europe.The “first wave” was relatively mild, with the illness often lasting just a few days. Deaths attributed to the disease were only slightly above the average — some 75,000 instead of the 63,000 seen in 1915. (Today, by contrast, influenza deaths in the United States l