While the COVID-19 pandemic has laid our face-to-face classes low, it has also provided a unique opportunity to take a look at how disease has altered the course of our nation, its leaders, and ourselves. Hopefully, we wont ever get a chance to experience what being in the belly of the Beast is like again, but our situation offers a perfect opportunity to look at how historical study can be incredibly helpful in taking past situations and their lessons and using it to assess how to proceed with a current dilemma. The ongoing pandemic of today is not the first to shake the foundations of American society or to challenge modern science. The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 killed over 600,000 Americans, and between 3 and 5 percent of the worlds population. Nows the perfect time to do some personal deep thinking about it.

So, heres the project;

Watch the Influenza 1918 video. This is an excellent program that appeared on the PBS series The American Experience. It is a grim but fascinating look at one of the greatest medical holocausts in history.

Watch the oral history interview with 1918 Pandemic survivor Edna Boone, someone who actually survived the BIG one and lived to tell about it.

After you have viewed the two videos, and in light of your experience with our current pandemic and your own historical efforts to understand the challenges of our current health crisis, your task is now to examine the two pandemics in a thoughtful, analytical essay incorporating the three essay questions in the “PANDEMIC REFLECTION ESSAY”  instructions below..