A Bryant

“When did the pandemic end? That is more difficult to say, for while flu pandemics often begin abruptly, they normally disappear only after several renewals of virulency and then a long tailing off. The pandemic of Spanish influenza subsided and sank below the level of general and even scientific perception in the United States and almost everywhere else in the world in spring 1919.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“The case and death rates of communities which had “strict” closing orders were no better and often worse than elsewhere. However, public health officials had to do something, and closing up theatres, schools, pool halls, and even churches was the style in fall 1918.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“World War I killed upwards of fifteen millions, wreaked immeasurable physical, social, and psychic damage, and left most of the citizens of the belligerent powers with a deep conviction that war must in some way be prohibited.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918

“Robert Graves, the poet and British Army officer, was in London, too, still shaky from the German metal he had received in his chest and thigh the year before. His mother-in-law contracted influenza, but deceived her physician in order to make the rounds of the latest London plays with her son, Tony, on leave from France. She died July 13: “her chief feeling was one of pleasure that Tony had got his leave prolonged on her account.” On the day she died, Grave’s friend and fellow poet, Sigfried Sassoon, who had been shot through the throat in 1917, was shot through the head while on patrol in No-Man’s-Land. He recovered. Tony was killed two months later.27 Yes, the war was much more engrossing than Spanish flu.”
― Alfred W. Crosby, America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918