> Other large influenza pandemics
> The Spanish flu pandemic was the largest, but not the only large recent influenza pandemic. Two decades before the Spanish flu the Russian flu pandemic (1889-1894) is believed to have killed 1 million people.
> Estimates for the death toll of the “Asian Flu” (1957-1958) vary between 1.5 and 4 million. Gatherer (2009) published the estimate of 1.5 million, while Michaelis et al. (2009) published an estimate of 2–4 million.
> According to a WHO publication the “Hong Kong Flu” (1968-1969) killed between 1 and 4 million people.
> Michaelis et al. (2009) published a lower estimate of 1–2 million.
> The Russian Flu pandemic of 1977-78 was caused by the same H1N1 virus that caused the Spanish flu. According to Michaelis et al. (2009) around 700,000 died worldwide.
> What becomes clear from this overview are two things: influenza pandemics are not rare[...]
Heck, ebola was a decade ago with 300k deaths. Novel viruses appear all the time.