“This isn’t our first rodeo..”

… is sometimes said to describe a repeat of a situation that’s complicated.

And that’s the case with the COVID pandemic–it’s not the first time the world has had a terrible time with large scale epidemics.

We touched on this a few months ago with our research into the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, but it’s worth returning to the rodeo to gain a bit of historical context. As we’ve noted before, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes”

(Attributed to Mark Twain, but probably James Eayrs. See QuoteInvestigator’s analysis.)

So let’s revisit the Epidemic Rodeo and see what lessons we might take away.

1. In the Swine Flu epidemic of 1976, a strange new device was used to quickly give many immunizations to a large number of people. (You’ll know it when you find it.) What was that device, and why aren’t we using it to rapidly immunize people with the COVID vaccine?

2. Can you find the first large scale program to immunize people from smallpox in the Americas? Who did it?

3. As we’ve learned, vaccine injectable materials often require special handling. The Pfizer vaccine requires a refrigeration between -80C and -60C. So, how was the smallpox vaccine transported in the answer to the previous question?

4. Yellow Fever epidemics have ravaged many places around the world forever. And while Yellow Fever used to be an enormous problem in New York, it isn’t any more. Why not? Was it due to the success of the Yellow Fever vaccination program? Or what?

As always, we all want to learn from HOW you found the answers. Each one isn’t difficult, but might require a bit of that SRS skillset. Tell us how you did it!

Search on!