Christopher Mores, virologist and public health professor at George Washington University, talks with Rachel Maddow about why improving our understanding of the transmission of coronavirus is a better strategy than trying to wall off the country.
The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster. The origins of this influenza variant is not precisely known - it is thought to have originated in China in a rare genetic shift of the influenza virus. A first wave of influenza appeared early in the spring of 1918 in Kansas and in military camps throughout the US; from here it spread to the Western Front with the American Doughboys and then back to North America after the Armistice. [CEF Study Group - March 2020]