For the week of Nov. 29, 2020:
History is repeating, as the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic.
More than a century ago, it was the Spanish flu, which eventually killed as as many as 50 million people.
WSU’s Margaret Andrews and SFU’s Andy Yan look back at the 1918-1919 Spanish flu.
On this edition of theBreaker.news Podcast, Margaret Andrews, history professor emerita from Washington State University, and Andy Yan, director of the Simon Fraser University City Program, join host Bob Mackin to compare the 1918-1919 epidemic with today’s COVID-19 crisis.
“Masks was not a big issue; schools, open or closed, big issue,” Andrews said. “In photographs you will find masks were being worn, they were being manufactured locally, but it wasn’t the issue it is today. At least, not in Vancouver.”
Said Yan: “Look at how COVID has really amplified the kind of gaps on socio-economic lines, on labour. Some very uncomfortable truths that perhaps are as uncomfortable now as they were in 1918.”
Listen to the preview of Andrews and Yan’s Dec. 3 fundraising webinar for the Friends of the Vancouver City Archives.
Plus Pacific Northwest and Pacific Rim headlines and commentary.
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