In 4th period today, a heated debate ensued between Benschine and Coff. The winner? I'm leaning towards Ben :) Here are a few articles I found while further researching the topic. Overall, the arguements are a little at odds with one another. One article actually puts American deaths at a lowly 675,000. The other claims total calamity at almost 100,000,000 deaths overall. Wow! Wikipedia's version seems a bit skewed though, as it references both of these articles, it also seems to include numbers from the encephalitis lethargica that his in 1920. In the end, I'd say that looking at the flu from a worldview and examining its lasting effects into the 1920s (and its spread into Southeast Asia), our textbook is really low-balling the number. If you're examing the dates 1918-1919, I'd guess probably only 30 or 40 million, but that number surely grew exponentially in 1920 with the outbreak of cases. In either case, I'm babbling too much. Read for yourselves and decide.
See, Mr. Benschine? We do learn legit things in Microbiology!
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