https://nypost.com/2020/05/16/why-life-went-on-as-normal-during-the-killer-pandemic-of-1969/
Wasn’t a shutdown then and shouldn’t have been one now.
From my reading of the article you linked, the 1968 pandemic was more comparable to the 2009 pandemic (which is still with us) in terms of its case fatality rates. A better comparison for Covid-19 would be the 1917-1919 H1N1 influenza pandemic that killed some 50 million people worldwide.
Covid-19 is not an influenza. For any influenza pandemic, we have the ability to develop a vaccine within months, since influenza vaccine technology is decades old. A vaccine makes a big difference. We don’t have the technical ability to generate a brand new Covid-19 vaccine and push it through the approval process within a few months, the way we do with influenza viruses.
The reason for the control measures with Covid-19 is that it is highly contagious, no one is immune, and it has a far higher fatality rate than any disease since the 1917-1919 influenza. It showed pandemic potential early on. The challenge for governments is to eradicate it, to keep it from ever becoming entrenched in the population.