The COVID-19 pandemic has exceeded 200,000 deaths worldwide, with its end still uncertain. History provides a sobering parallel: between 1968 and 1970, the Hong Kong flu pandemic resulted in approximately one million fatalities.
COVID-19 marks the first major global pandemic of the 21st century, affecting nearly every nation and prompting widespread lockdowns and social distancing measures. In the previous century, the 1918-1919 Spanish flu killed 40-50 million people, while the 1957 Asian flu caused 1-4 million deaths.
The most comparable recent event is the Hong Kong flu, which led to about one million deaths from 1968 to 1970—including over 30,000 in France alone. As detailed in a 2005 Liberation article, this pandemic remains surprisingly obscure despite its scale.
The Hong Kong flu virus (H3N2), an evolution of the Asian flu (H2N2), emerged in Central Asia or China around February 1968. By July, it ravaged Hong Kong, infecting 500,000 people in a single month. It rapidly spread across Southeast Asia, India, Australia, and Japan.
The winter of 1968-1969 brought H3N2 to the Northern Hemisphere. U.S. sailors returning from Vietnam introduced it stateside, causing 50,000 deaths in three months. Europe followed in fall 1969; France peaked at 6,000 deaths in January 1969, with a total of 31,226 fatalities. A second wave from December 1969 to January 1970 claimed even more lives.
Like COVID-19, the Hong Kong flu was strikingly underplayed by politicians and media. This stemmed from Cold War tensions, the optimism of the post-WWII economic boom (1945-1973), and the ongoing Vietnam War (1955-1975).
In France, post-May 1968 recovery fostered complacency. Even the Institut Pasteur declared in July 1968 that no true epidemic gripped France or Europe—despite school closures, shop shutdowns, transport disruptions, and surging mortality. The press rarely headlined the crisis, reflecting a troubling casualness in coverage.
Vaccine efforts faltered too: The Institut Pasteur isolated the strain in September 1968, but no effective mass vaccine was developed, as widespread immunization was not yet standard practice.
