Asian flu vaccine being shipped by helicopter across the US
Credit: Walter Sanders/The LIFE Picture Collection
In 1957, writes Niall Ferguson, the United States was hit by one of the deadliest pandemics in history – Asian flu. More than a million died worldwide. Yet there was no state of emergency; no lockdowns; no school closures. Hospitals were cleared for the sickest, and the rest were told to stay at home and drink fruit juice. President Eisenhower asked Congress for just $2.5 million in aid to public health, a tiny sum compared with the several trillion spent in response to Covid-19. But the most striking thing about the pandemic of 1957 is that no one remembers it, that it left almost no mark on its generation. Why?