Then and now: Manhattan area responds to 1918, 2020 pandemics

In a rare move, K-State officials announced on Thursday the indefinite suspension of in-person classes because of coronavirus concerns.

The move extended the university’s spring break by another week, giving faculty time to prepare for a switch to remote online schooling beginning March 23. The last time a similar suspension occurred, according to K-State archivists, was in 1918 during the Spanish Influenza pandemic. […]

The third and last wave of the pandemic hit in spring 1919, and “many reported that it was so severe that people could wake up healthy and be dead by nightfall,” the Kansas Historical Society said. As the season tapered, the number of patients had dropped enough that governments lifted bans from cities and states, allowing people to resume school and church. Historians estimate the disease killed between 20 million to 50 million people across the world — more than the total number of deaths from World War I — and about 675,000 people in the U.S. alone. […]

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