Major funding for backstories provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

From Virginia Humanities, this is Backstory.

Welcome to Backstory, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines. I'm Ed Ayers.

Each week, along with my colleagues Nathan Conley, Brian Ballot, and Joanne Freeman,

we explore a part of American history that's been in the news.

For several weeks, nothing has dominated national and international headlines more than the coronavirus.

As of this week, approximately 113,000 cases have been identified worldwide.

More than 4,000 deaths have been reported, while concerns about the spread of coronavirus have led to widespread quarantines and cancellations of public gatherings.

Coronavirus is threatening people across the world, and it's also affecting global markets.

Some economists are predicting a recession, and there's talk of potential bailouts for hard-hit industries such as air travel and cruise ships.

The coronavirus might be new, but this is by no means the first time that America and the world have found themselves in the grip of a deadly virus.

Over a century ago, in 1918, Spanish influenza caused a global pandemic spread in large part by soldiers returning home from the First World War.

The virus killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people were alive.

But the story of the virus and the many lives that affected has often been forgotten.

Back in 2018, back story looked at the history of Spanish influenza in an episode entitled Forgotten Flu, America and the 1918 Pandemic.

So, in the wake of ongoing concerns about coronavirus, we wanted to revisit a couple of segments from that show to learn about how people from the past dealt with a terrifying and unpredictable virus.

In this first segment, Brian talks to Nancy Bristo, a historian at the University of Puget Sound and the author of American Pandemic, The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic.

Scholars estimate that some 675,000 Americans died from the Spanish flu and that a quarter of the population was infected.

As Brian learned, this put a huge strain on the country's medical resources and medical personnel who were desperate to stop the spread of disease.

On the local level, the actual fighting that takes place is at the local public health boards so that you have in cities and towns across the country, these public health experts who are trying to impose restrictions on the behaviors of their people.

So, what were some of the specific measures that local health boards took?

Well, they started with the easiest ones and these always make my audiences smile. They outlawed spitting in public and they took away what was called the shared or public drinking cup.

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