Demons of Illness and Poverty Stalking the Lucky Gods, by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1884. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Herbert R. Cole Collection.

Epidemic

Volume XIII, Number 3 | summer 2020

Miscellany

In May 2020 a preliminary staff report of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York looked at several historical data sets from Germany and concluded that influenza mortality in 1918–20 caused significant societal change in the subsequent decade. Influenza deaths were associated with lower per-capita spending, especially on services consumed by the young, and were correlated with the share of votes for extremist parties in the elections of 1932 and 1933.

Charts & Graphs

Flu Fallout

A majority of the estimated 675,000 American deaths from the influenza pandemic of 1918–19 occurred during the second wave, which swept the country throughout the fall of 1918.

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Health in all lands is among the indispensable guarantees of human progress.

—Helen Keller, 1936