The Spanish Flu vs COVID-19 pandemic, a historical comparison continued

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Local newspaper archives document community impact

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Much like in the early stages of the coronavirus, public officials in the Oct. 10, 1918 edition of The Aurora Sun wished to update Hamilton County residents on how to best to avoid the Spanish Flu.
“City Physician Donald Steenburg makes the following recommendations for avoiding the disease and for treating it when contracted,” the article noted. “‘The person who finds himself taking cold had better proceed on the theory that he is ‘taking influenza.’ There is no way of telling by clinical or laboratory examination whether a cold is an ordinary cold or a mild influenza.” 
Here lies a significant difference in the attack of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike the Spanish Flu epidemic in early years, testing to determine the presence of the COVID virus was readily available in 2020 thanks to modern medicine.

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