Coronavirus: What India can learn from the deadly 1918 flu 1918 flu pandemic is believed to have infected a third of the population worldwide All interest in living has ceased, Mahatma Gandhi, battling a vile flu in 1918, told a confidante at a retreat in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The highly infectious Spanish flu had swept through the ashram in Gujarat where 48-year-old Gandhi was living, four years after he had returned from South Africa. He rested, stuck to a liquid diet during "this protracted and first long illness" of his life. When news of his illness spread, a local newspaper wrote: "Gandhi's life does not belong to him - it belongs to India". Outside, the deadly flu, which slunk in through a ship of returning soldiers that docked in Bombay (now Mumbai) in June 1918, ravaged India. The disease, according to health inspector JS Turner, came "like a thief in the night, its onset rapid and insidious". A second wave...