Using The Spanish Flu Pandemic As A Textbook

Not that i am subscriber to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or had even heard of it until today but they had an article regarding the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic and it chimes very closely with today's events.
The 1918 flu lasted until 1920 and killed 50 million and scientists and historians must be studying that outbreak for clues to the most effective way to stop the current global pandemic.
The National Academy of Sciences piece says at the oneet of the outbreak, there were no effective drugs or vaccines to treat this killer flu strain and citizens were ordered to wear masks, schools, theaters, churches, businesses were closed and quarantines were imposed advising people to stay at home and public gatherings were banned.
The flu ravaged the World for two years and then it came to an end as those that were infected either died or developed immunity, the 'herd immunity effect' which our own Conservative Garden were considering until the intervention of scientists and an unacceptable death toll.
In the aftermath, they found that death rates were much lower in countries that implemented preventative measures such as lock-downs early on, versus those that did so late or not at all.
The studies reached another important conclusion for today's politicians that relaxing intervention measures too early caused relapses, leading to second and third waves of the flu which killed many more while the nations which kept the lock-downs in place longer, fared better.
Fascinating stuff and almost identical to today except today we have the additional factor of a possible vaccine but every World Leader should be sent a copy of that edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and use it as a text book of what to do, and what not to do, to get as many of us through this as possible.