Comparisons have been made with the present coronavirus pandemic, and the 1918 pandemic. But really the present situation does not compare to what happened then, where corpses were put out in the street, in some parts of the world much like rubbish is put out today. And, both were from China, even though the 1918 flu is called the “Spanish flu”:
https://thehill.com/changing-america/opinion/488429-the-1918-spanish-flu-ravaged-the-world-what-can-it-teach-us-about
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanish-flu-1918-china-origins-pandemic-science-health/
“For decades, scientists have debated where in the world the pandemic started, variously pinpointing its origins in France, China, the American Midwest, and beyond. Without a clear location, scientists have lacked a complete picture of the conditions that bred the disease and factors that might lead to similar outbreaks in the future. The deadly "Spanish flu" claimed more lives than World War I, which ended the same year the pandemic struck. Now, new research is placing the flu's emergence in a forgotten episode of World War I: the shipment of Chinese laborers across Canada in sealed train cars. Historian Mark Humphries of Canada's Memorial University of Newfoundland says that newly unearthed records confirm that one of the side stories of the war—the mobilization of 96,000 Chinese laborers to work behind the British and French lines on World War I's Western Front—may have been the source of the pandemic. Writing in the January issue of the journal War in History, Humphries acknowledges that his hypothesis awaits confirmation by viral samples from flu victims. Such evidence would tie the disease's origin to one location. But some other historians already find his argument convincing. "This is about as close to a smoking gun as a historian is going to get," says historian James Higgins, who lectures at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and who has researched the 1918 spread of the pandemic in the United States. "These records answer a lot of questions about the pandemic."
However, this present situation pans out, some questions in the international arena need to be asked about China’s food and health practices. Political correctness must be overcome, as human lives depend upon it.