>>The 1918 flu pandemic killed about 650,000 Americans and about 20-40 million worldwide<<
With WWI soldiers cramped into ships, no tamiflu and no antibiotics for secondary infections.
Our medicine and circumstances are not sitting in 1918.
Agreed. How does the number of infections and deaths where we are sitting justify this declaration? Putting the least sinister explanation on it would be that we are now such a nation of government-dependent pansies, he had to do it, even if just for show. But, with him, who knows?
My grandmother told me about the swine flu in Washington State in 1919.
She said it was the young adult people who died mostly. My mother was choking and grandpa took her by the heels upside down and beat on her back till she cough out a lot of mucus.
He buried the other minister in town’s parishioners, and when he was sick the other minister buried his parishioners.
The 1918-1919 Swine flu was a much stronger strain. People died quickly from pleural effusions and stress on the heart, before secondary infections could have set in.