And ultimately, people who remember what happened and people who forget. But beyond those medical feats, the story of epidemics remains a story about people: people who become sick, people who die, people whose lives are upended, people who care for others. The century since has seen many vaccines and treatments become available to combat infectious diseases. There was the young woman, “flushed with fever,” whose large family kept vigil at her bedside, hoping for a recovery that never came.Īn estimated 50 million people worldwide died of influenza during the 1918 pandemic.

There was Mike the piano mover, who in a frenzy left his bed and was about to leap from a window before medical staff grabbed him. Some who died in the makeshift hospital stuck with Starr. “This happened night after night.” In October, around the pinnacle of the pandemic, roughly 11,000 Philadelphians perished. “When I returned to duty at 4 p.m., I found few whom I had seen before,” Starr wrote. Patients, desperate for breath, became delirious and incontinent and would die within days.

Hearts of iron 4 extended timeline