spanish flu in north carolina=a cautionary tale

Informational poster from the Spanish Flu pandemic.
Informational poster from the Spanish Flu pandemic.

An overwhelmed healthcare system and thousands of deaths.

The parallels are eerily similar to the COVID-19 pandemic–in 1918 the Spanish Lady came calling…the Spanish Flu. The pandemic spread across the globe, killing somewhere between 20-50 million. Kip Tabb, writing for the Coastal Review Online, tells the story of when the last pandemic came calling on eastern North Carolina.

Informational poster from the Spanish Flu pandemic.

“In April, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a key member of the national COVID-19 task force, called out shaking hands as a particularly dangerous custom that should be relegated to the past.

“ I don’t think we should ever shake hands ever again, to be honest with you,” he said in a Wall Street Journal podcast. “Not only would it be good to prevent coronavirus disease — it probably would decrease instances of influenza dramatically in this country.”

It was not the first time in our nation’s history that the custom had been called into question.”

To read this and other stories in the Coastal Review Online click here.