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Thanks VR. A couple of things from the Kolata book (I read it when it first came out, it's been a while); the 1918 flu was the worst of, and right in the middle of a five year period of particularly bad flu seasons (1916-1920); also, there was a very bad outbreak in the 1890s, one of the worst ever, but anyone who had that one and survived it never even got the sniffles during the Spanish Lady outbreak.

There was an initial wave in the spring of 1918 (apparently starting in western Kansas) which spread widely because of men being drafted and sent to army camps, but it was not particularly bad, just the normal flu. A few months later it mutated and became much more virulent and that is the wave that took the most lives...apparently those who had survived the first wave were immune or at least not likely to die from the deadlier wave.

I had a second cousin who died in 1990 at the age of 90. Both of his sisters caught the flu and died from it a few days apart in early 1920 (in Missouri). I once heard the story of their deaths from him. Even if that wave wasn't as deadly as the second wave, I still don't understand why the deaths in early 1920 are not included in the total usually given for deaths in the US.