Absolutely this, regarding any conclusions people might draw for the current pandemic. I'm almost surprised that peak flattening had a measurable effect on total outcomes at all given the state of medicine in 1918. They hardly understood the difference between viral and bacterial infections back then. Medicine still can't do anything against a new virus, but the art of giving the body a longer time to fight it has advanced considerably. And as far as I understand it, bad cases off CIVID19 draw themselves out much longer than the 1918 flu
That may be true, I wonder what other cultural factors are at play as well. It may have been that people were more self-sufficient then, and thus it was not as disruptive to isolate.
It seems appropriate to bring up on International Women's Day that women's labor at the time was largely that of 'homemaker' - a highly self-sufficiency oriented role. To put it in tech terms, there were a lot more people WFH, and a lot less dependencies on external services. Women were only 20% of the labor force at the time vs 47% today [1].
I say this NOT to advocate for a return to this state, just pointing out a large factor to consider, one often overlooked.
