Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It

by Gina Kolata

People were changed by the epidemic. Boccaccio told of two extremes. One group of terrified citizens hid out from society, locking themselves inside of homes where no one had gotten sick. There, they “settled down to a peaceable existence, consuming modest quantities of delicate foods and precious wines and avoiding all excesses. They refrained from speaking to outsiders, refused to receive news of the dead or the sick, and entertained themselves with music and whatever other amusements they were able to devise.” At the other extreme were those who fled to lives of wild abandon. They “maintained that an infallible way of warding off this appalling evil was to drink heavily, enjoy life to the full, go round singing and merrymaking, and gratify all of one’s cravings whenever the opportunity offered, and shrug the whole thing off as one enormous joke.”