Why careful consideration must be given to when we re-open schools and how
John Barry’s book, The Great Influenza, provides an extraordinary account of the medical and scientific struggle against the Spanish Flu in 1918. In the second edition of the book, written after the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, he added a chapter on the issues that would need to be addressed and the lessons learned for any future pandemic. Reading the chapter now in the midst of the covid-19 crisis it is extraordinarily prescient. He considers the experience of various ‘non-pharmaceutical …