Between Posts

Here is a link to an article from a study by the New York Department of Health, published in the the Bulletin of the American Statistical Association in 1922. The entire article, which deals with the "epochs" of influenza pandemics over a five hundred year period, is informative and instructive in light of the current Covid-19 pandemic.  Here is the most pertinent, Covid-related take-away:  "The fifth epoch (Spanish Flu) began in 1915 and is still in progress. The first pandemic invasion was the great wave of 1918, which has been followed by several revivals in various countries, some of serious proportions as to mortality. This, doubtless, was the most fatal of all influenza pandemics and was perhaps the greatest single catastrophe of modern times,not excepting wars. Therefore the duration of the first four epochs being roughly 24, 15, 28, and 12 years respectively, or an average of 19.8 years, it is clear that the epoch beginning in 1915 will very probably contain on