Note that between these two events we, oh, learned the germ theory of disease, and hypothesized the rat -> flea -> human path of plague transmission; 1918 was p

Note that between these two events we, oh, learned the germ theory of disease, and hypothesized the rat -> flea -> human path of plague transmission; 1918 was pre-antibiotics but we'd still learned a whole bunch of things that radically improved medicine, public health, etc. Modern, or circa 1918 (after Typhoid Mary was permanently quarantined) public health measures alone could likely keep a plague epidemic from taking such a huge percentage of people. Note researchers are doing vaguely similar sorts of things WRT to the Black Death: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death#DNA_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death#DNA_evidence