Plagues & wars: the 'Spanish Flu' pandemic as a lesson from history

摘要

Armed conflict and infectious disease outbreaks are both preventable occurrences that have the potential to devastate human societies. We are currently approaching the centenary of the conclusion of what is still justly known as'The Great War'. November 1918 saw the end of a horrifying global conflict distinguished by mechanized slaughter on an industrial scale, many of the relatively minor chapters of which count as atrocious and reprehensible human tragedies in their own right.The Somme, Passchendaele, Verdun, the Greek and Armenian Genocides, the list could go on.The First World War was a humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented proportions, which directly caused the deaths of some 20 million souls. However, we are also approaching the centenary of a modern 'plague' that not only killed many more people than the First World War, but was also actively facilitated by that conflict and still casts a shadow over public health practice today (Horton 2018).