COVID Versus the 1918 Flu: John Torpey on The Thought Project

CUNY Graduate Center

John Torpey is a presidential professor of sociology and history and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The Graduate Center, CUNY. He hosts the International Horizons podcast. Professor Torpey is also a Forbes.com columnist, and in a recent Forbes column, he compared the current pandemic to the 1918 Spanish flu. He discusses that column and its takeaways in this episode of The Thought Project. In this conversation, he elaborates on the differences in the circumstances, approaches to vaccines and preventive measures, and death rates. He discusses what will be most important as we emerge from this “catastrophe.”