eli5 What are the ways people in the 20th century survived the Spanish flu compared to what we experienced in 2020?

Question

eli5 What are the ways people in the 20th century survived the Spanish flu compared to what we experienced in 2020?

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Answer 1

In the 1800s and early 1900s Medical education for MD, RN and other staff had paltry content related to the nature and scope of pandemics. The Spanish Flu probably originated on an American mid-western farm. This flu circled the world at least 4 years.

In the US, some doctors, early-on, came to guess that transmission was mainly by air and so started wearing masks and advising same to the general public. There were no vaccines. Estimates that globally between 50 million and 100 million people died. My dad’s parents died 2 days apart in 1918.