York Town Square

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Lessons from York County, world history: Pandemic flu preparations crucial

This mural at the Windsor Township Commerce Bank branch shows the scene as troops go off to the Great War – World War I – at the Red Lion Ma & Pa Railroad station in 1917. About 200 of the more than 6,000 York countians who served in World War I did not return. Some were victimized by the pandemic Spanish flu bug. (To see full mural, click here. Background posts: Great War hero Jeannette Zinn of York: ‘She made the supreme sacrifice’ and Spanish flu of 1918 no three-day fever. Try 365-day worldwide plague and Easter in York County, 1919: Sadness, joy, hope.

In my York Sunday News column History’s lesson: Prepare now for pandemic, I pulled together several recent posts on the pandemic Spanish flu of 1918-1919 that caused so much death and despair.
I wasn’t aware when I first started posting on the Spanish flu that the swine flu virus was already afflicting scores of people around the world.
I tied the Sunday column into an pandemic planning session in York, sponsored by the York-Adams Metropolitan Medical Response System.
For all those York Town Square posts on the Spanish or Swine flu, click here.