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What Have We Learned From The Flu Pandemic Of 1918?

WUNC | By Amanda Magnus,
Frank Stasio
Published April 4, 2018 at 12:22 PM EDT

2018 marks the one-hundred-year anniversary of a flu pandemic that killed 50 to 100 million people and infected hundreds of millions around the world. Host Frank Stasio talks to James Leloudis, a history professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, about why the 1918 influenza was so deadly, and what impact it had on public health.

Host Frank Stasio talks with history professor James Leloudis and epidemiologist Ralph Baric about the lessons learned from the flu pandemic of 1918.

Epidemiologist Ralph Baric joins the conversation to share the science behind the influenza vaccine and what the next big flu epidemic could be like. Baric is a professor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Leloudis and Baric will both be speaking at the symposium “Going Viral: Impact and Implications of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic” at UNC Chapel Hill. The symposium runs Wednesday, April 4 to Friday, April 6. 

Office workers organize to fight the flu while protecting against their own infection.
Courtesy of UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health /
Office workers organize to fight the flu while protecting against their own infection.
A flu isolation ward at a naval training station in San Francisco, California.
Courtesy of UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health /
A flu isolation ward at a naval training station in San Francisco, California.

Copyright 2018 North Carolina Public Radio
Amanda Magnus
Amanda Magnus grew up in Maryland and went to high school in Baltimore. She became interested in radio after an elective course in the NYU journalism department. She got her start at Sirius XM Satellite Radio, but she knew public radio was for her when she interned at WNYC. She later moved to Madison, where she worked at Wisconsin Public Radio for six years. In her time there, she helped create an afternoon drive news magazine show, called Central Time. She also produced several series, including one on Native American life in Wisconsin. She spends her free time running, hiking, and roller skating. She also loves scary movies.
See stories by Amanda Magnus
Frank Stasio
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
See stories by Frank Stasio