Coronavirus cases continue to rise here in the United States, where there are now an average of 125,000 daily infections, with cases soaring in areas with low vaccination rates.
We’re joined now by John Barry. He’s professor at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans. He’s the author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, his latest piece for The Washington Post is headlined “What history tells us about the delta variant — and the variants that will follow.”
We last spoke to John in July of 2020. At the time, he was warning the pandemic could get, quote, “much, much worse.” Well, over the last year, over three-and-a-half million people have died around the world, including nearly half a million in the United States.
So, John Barry, so sadly, your prediction was right. Talk about what you learned from the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that we should learn from today.
JOHN BARRY: Well, it’s not just 1918. There were pandemics 1889, 1957, ’68, even 2009, and they all behaved the same way. 1918 is the most dramatic. You had a first wave that was
— source democracynow.org | Aug 12, 2021