“Harris believes that the rapid spread of Spanish flu in the fall of 1918 was at least partially to blame on public health officials unwilling to impose quarantines during wartime. In Britain, for example, a government official named Arthur Newsholme knew full well that a strict civilian lockdown was the best way to fight the spread of the highly contagious disease. But he wouldn’t risk crippling the war effort by keeping munitions factory workers and other civilians home.”
And if a quarantines had been imposed?
Less people would have died. I think there are pretty good studies into how different responses to Spanish Flu impacted the death rate. I’m not in this business so I defer to the folks making the big bucks to make the decisions for the right reasons. Bill Gates estimated back in 2015 that if we have a Spanish Flu type pandemic occurs 30 million people will die without a vaccine. Because we have the ability to make a vaccine unlike 1917, the longer we can go without a cataclysmic mutation the more likely we have a vaccine that can stomp this out.