Brian McCullough

“To sell war bonds, they had already organized nearly the entire city, all the way down to the level of each block, making each residential block the responsibility of “a logical leader no matter what her nationality”—i.e., an Irishwoman in an Irish neighborhood, an African American woman in an African American neighborhood, and so on. They intended to use that same organization now to distribute everything from medical care to food.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

“killed enough to depress the average life expectancy in the United States by more than ten years. Some of those who died from influenza and pneumonia would have died if no epidemic had occurred. Pneumonia was after all the leading cause of death. So the key figure is actually the “excess death” toll. Investigators today believe that in the United States the 1918–19 epidemic caused an excess death toll of about 675,000 people. The nation then had a population between 105 and 110 million, while it was approaching 300 million in 2006. So a comparable figure today would be approximately 1,750,000 deaths.”
― John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History