As Chinese families were celebrating the Lunar New Year on February 11 1918, almost exactly 100 years ago, the Western World was edging grimly out of the bloodiest world war ever fought. Around 20 million soldiers and civilians were dead.
At that moment no one realised that in a matter of weeks, one of the world's worst global pandemics was about to break out. By the spring of 1919, as the third and final wave of so-called "Spanish Flu" swept across the globe, around a third of the world's population had been infected, and close to 100 million had died.
Since then, by comparison, every threatened pandemic ended up being (in comparison) a damp squib. And in 2018, despite reports worldwide of the worst flu season in decades, no one expects anything like
Spanish Flu - which never originated in Spain, just for the record. In an average year, about 5 million people get infected with one flu virus or another, and an average of 10 per cent of these - about 500,000 die. But during our Sars epidemic in 2003, a total of 8,000 people were infected worldwide, and just 775 people died. Look back at mortality data for 2003 and deaths attributed to pneumonia (all Sars deaths were recorded as pneumonia) and there is no blip to give a hint of the panic that swept Hong Kong and the world in the spring of 2003.
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