Reading for Pandemic: Viral Modernism by Elizabeth Outka, New York: Columbia University Press, 2020

Abstract

COVID-19, like previous outbreaks of infectious disease at the turn of the twenty-first century, has reawakened interest in the 1918–1919 Spanish influenza pandemic. As we wrestle with the unknowns and strive to contain the spread of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic operates as a poignant benchmark; how do morbidity, mortality, and case fatality rates of COVID-19 and Spanish flu compare?