The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1921 is the event most closely comparable to the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. It is estimated to have killed 200,000 people in the United Kingdom at a time when its population was about two thirds what it is now. Estimates of global mortality range from 20 to 100 million people at a time when the world’s population was about a sixth of what it is now. Australia was largely protected by distance and quarantine. In Europe, where Spanish flu took a much heavier toll, governments took no special steps to curtail its transmission, apart from isolating the infected and
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