The Bad Cat, whose site for some reason does not use capital letters, which I think makes it less serious, but someone pretending to be a cat, would not care, makes a very interesting observation about the over-blown nature of pandemics, in particular, the Spanish Flu epidemic that hit during World War I. The odd thing was how the Spanish flu killed otherwise healthy soldiers in a few days, but other people, not so quick, or not at all. “The unprecedented overall mortality and the mortality rate among young adults during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic is incompletely understood. Deaths in the United States peaked with a sudden spike in October 1918. Later, Wade Hampton Frost studied surveys of 8 US cities and found that, for every 1000 persons aged 25–29 years, ∼30% were infected with influenza virus, and 1% died of pneumonia or influenza. This 3% case-fatality rate has been called, “perhaps the most important unsolved mystery of the pandemic.”
One hypothesis for why this occurred, is that the higher mortalities of the soldiers was iatrogenic, doctor caused. In 1918, aspirin was first marketed, and Big Pharma was keen to push its new wonder drug. Doses of 8-31 grams were given to sick soldiers. It is known today that the daily dose of aspirin should never exceed the level of mgs, even in exceptional circumstances, and doses are far, far lower to avoid toxicity, and other side effects. But, the even higher doses would likely produce the rapid declines and deaths that were observed. Bad Cat cited some peer reviews papers that support his idea.