Down memory lane: Unprecedented strong public and scientific interest in the “Spanish flu” 1918/1919 during the COVID‐19 pandemic

[...]according to a non‐systematic PubMed search using the tool PubMed by Year (https://esperr.github.io/pubmed‐by‐year/), the number of listed scientific studies per 100,000 citations using the search terms Spanish flu or influenza 1918 in their abstract/title reached an all‐time high in 2020 (Figu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses 2021-03, Vol.15 (2), p.318-319
Main Authors: Staub, Kaspar, Floris, Joël
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
COVID-19
COVID-19 - epidemiology
COVID-19 - psychology
Exhumation
Humans
Influenza
Influenza A Virus, H1N1 Subtype
Influenza Pandemic, 1918-1919 - statistics & numerical data
Influenza, Human - epidemiology
Influenza, Human - virology
Information Seeking Behavior
Information Storage and Retrieval - trends
Letter to the Editor
Letters to the Editor
Outbreaks
Pandemics
Peer review
Public health
Respiratory diseases
SARS-CoV-2
Trends
Viruses
Writing
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Items that cite this one
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Summary:[...]according to a non‐systematic PubMed search using the tool PubMed by Year (https://esperr.github.io/pubmed‐by‐year/), the number of listed scientific studies per 100,000 citations using the search terms Spanish flu or influenza 1918 in their abstract/title reached an all‐time high in 2020 (Figure 1B). To highlight this fact however is important, because this valuable historical knowledge should be considered with thoughtfulness, especially since many questions about the Spanish flu are still unanswered.5 While research will certainly have more urgent problems to solve at the moment, in the future, historical epidemiologists should also analyze how researchers and the public recall the past during a new pandemic outbreak. Are these reflections scientifically balanced, and do they have an influence on the resilience and the reception and management of the current outbreak? AUTHOR CONTRIBUTION Kaspar Staub: Conceptualization (equal); Formal analysis (equal); Investigation (equal); Methodology (equal); Supervision (lead); Visualization (equal); Writing‐original draft (equal); Writing‐review & editing (equal).
ISSN:1750-2640
1750-2659
DOI:10.1111/irv.12806