Maybe. But a possible contributor for the 1918 flu pandemic's relative obscurity is that it overlapped with World War I and was followed within ~20 years by the Great Depression and World War II. It occurred during one of the most turbulent times in modern history.

In contrast, the 2020 pandemic is presently not sharing the spotlight. Maybe something of comparable impact will happen. Or maybe it'll be forgotten regardless. But I don't know that the 1918 pandemic's status is all that illustrative.

I can only really think of two times in history where we talk about a major disease outbreak: the Black Death, and the Plague of Justinian, and the latter one is really marginal (unless you're covering Late Antiquity in detail, it's going to be unknown). Other than these two, there's the less specific discussion of disease during the New World colonization epoch.

I suspect that COVID-19 will replace the Spanish Flu as the "pandemic everyone talks about when there's a pandemic concern," but this is the sort of mention that requires explanation because it's not really part of the expected repertoire of history the same way the Black Death is.

The pandemic is dovetailing in interesting ways with other matters of geopolitical importance. I wouldn't say anything is stealing the spotlight from anything else but the confluence of events makes this moment feel like we might be crossing the Rubicon.

Agreed. The 1968 hong-kong flu killed between 1 and 4 million people. Nobody talks about that now. They didn't talk about it much then, either. Woodstock, which happened during that flu season, gets talked about more.

With this latest surge per-capita deaths from covid19 just passed the low end of the 1968 flu estimates.

Something to be considered is that today's population is on average older than in 1968 and therefore there are more people vulnerable to respiratory illnesses than ever(*atleast before COVID19).

So are you saying the 1968 flu was worse, because per capita across the world it killed as many, or up to three times as many, people in a younger world? (so far, covid19 is not gone yet)

It was pretty bad. The flu has all the long term complications for some people that covid does - the lung problems, heart swelling, brain problems, etc.

I talk to people who were alive in 1968. It just wasn't really on anyone's radar. Rarely made headlines in the U.S.

I wonder if there wasn't something else going on in 1918 that perhaps eclipsed it in terms of importance.

I think that’s the point.

Economic effects of the virus may well be more long reaching though.

Don't conflate the virus with the lockdowns. Knock-on effects of the lockdowns - which were a choice by governments, not some inevitability - are projected to have far worse long-term effects.

I agree, but that is also part of what Thiel is talking about.