Academic explores whether lessons could have been learned from ‘forgotten pandemic’?

Hosted by local group Reclaim the Enlightenment, the event features academic Guy Beiner speak on the theme ‘Lost and found: in search of the memory of ‘Spanish’ Flu.’

Chairman of Reclaim the Enlightenment, John Gray, said: “Until the Covid 19 plague struck, the flu pandemic of 1918-19 was the worst health catastrophe to strike the modern world with an estimated 20-50 million deaths globally – more than those killed in the First World War.

“Yet like other catastrophes, and in an Irish context one thinks of the Great Famine or the United Irish rebellion of 1798, the subsequent communal response was often one of forgetting or even erasure.

“In the case of the handling of the flu pandemic one wonders whether disastrous mistakes or valuable innovations have been forgotten, and lessons that might be valuable to us in our present plight.

“Of course medical science was less advanced then. Perhaps today we are more bound to be rationally guided by the science, imperfect though it still is.”

Guy Beiner, a Professor of Modern History in Israel, is the man to tease some of these issues out. His book on the subject ‘Pandemic Awakenings: the Forgotten and Unforgotten Flu of 1918-1919’ is due for publication by Oxford University Press.

The seminar takes place at 4pm via Zoom (ID 504 338 8188). All are welcome.