There is circumstantial evidence to indicate that the 1889 pandemic was actually caused by another coronavirus and not influenza.
Oh, I didn't realize that. Yet, even my 90 year old grandpa has stated he's never seen anything like this, so were we just callous in the 60s when millions upon millions of people were dying of Asian and Hong Kong Flus? What changed between the last pandemic and this one? Technology has led us to believe we can save everyone?
Unfortunately I think part of the answer is somewhat political in nature, which I'm not willing to get into an argument over.
The other side of the problem is that lawmakers have no incentive to set aside money/time/resources for pandemic preparedness.
A quote from HHS Secretary under Bush, Mark Leavitt sums up part of the problem nicely:
> “In advance of a pandemic, anything you say sounds alarmist. After a pandemic starts, everything you’ve done is inadequate.”
Another example of lawmakers having no incentive to think about the future:
>The Public Health Emergency Preparedness program’s funding has gone from about a billion dollars in 2003 to $675 million this year, while the Hospital Preparedness program has gone from more than $500 million at its peak in 2004 to less than $300 million today.
> Other large influenza pandemics
> The Spanish flu pandemic was the largest, but not the only large recent influenza pandemic. Two decades before the Spanish flu the Russian flu pandemic (1889-1894) is believed to have killed 1 million people.
> Estimates for the death toll of the “Asian Flu” (1957-1958) vary between 1.5 and 4 million. Gatherer (2009) published the estimate of 1.5 million, while Michaelis et al. (2009) published an estimate of 2–4 million.
> According to a WHO publication the “Hong Kong Flu” (1968-1969) killed between 1 and 4 million people.
> Michaelis et al. (2009) published a lower estimate of 1–2 million.
> The Russian Flu pandemic of 1977-78 was caused by the same H1N1 virus that caused the Spanish flu. According to Michaelis et al. (2009) around 700,000 died worldwide.
> What becomes clear from this overview are two things: influenza pandemics are not rare[...]
Heck, ebola was a decade ago with 300k deaths. Novel viruses appear all the time.