Pandemic news, then and now

While the deadly flu was first detected in India sometime in June 1918, it was only in October that year that the sanitary commissioner issued a formal notification declaring a pandemic

As we went through one Covid-19 wave after another, the need to know more about a similar infection that ravaged the world 100 years ago grew stronger. One of the well-known libraries in New Delhi tried to look for newspapers dating back to the summer of 1918, when the flu had surfaced in India, but found the relevant bunch missing. After some more disappointing searching, it was at the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library that a window opened up into the past. The projector screen lit up with faded headlines and reports from newspapers restored as microfilm. The microfilm reading