The first confirmed case of “Spanish flu” was in March 1918.
By October 4 to 6 million Americans had the flu during that one month, and 200,000 of them died, that month. That’s leaving out the many millions elsewhere in the world.
I’m not sure it’s reasonable to call that a “slow spread.”
By comparison, we reportedly have <10,000 confirmed cases in Africa to date. That’s since December and in third world sanitary conditions and crowding. To my mind that rate of spread indicates it just isn’t very contagious from an epidemiological POV, or we’d have cases in the six or seven figure range by now, not in four figures.
Also, a couple of infected people got into Nigeria some time back, but they’re presently reporting only about 20 cases. I believe we can do a better job of controlling spread than Nigeria.
The time line between the start of the outbreak and the logarithmic phase is the parallel of which I speak. From today’s date hereon will be telling. I do agree that our medical system can handle all but a catastrophic outbreak or a lethal mutation (airborne variant) of the disease. We cannot be complacent in the face of this disease and measures needed to keep it out.