Sure, there have been a lot of Flu pandemics with lower case fatality rates as well. Prior to this pandemic, they had actually narrowed down the flu subtype: "

Sure, there have been a lot of Flu pandemics with lower case fatality rates as well. Prior to this pandemic, they had actually narrowed down the flu subtype: "the reanalysis of seroarcheological data suggested Influenza A subtype H3 (possibly the H3N8 subtype) as a more likely cause for the 1889–1890 pandemic" There was no thoughts that it was Coronavirus related before this pandemic. edit: Interestingly though, the 1889-90 pandemic was thought to have originated in Bukhara, part of the Russian empire at the time, which has been historically a cattle raising area. H3N8 is Equine influenza virus, where as HCoV-OC43 was a Bovine coronavirus.