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Back on the epidemics of the past: what do they teach us? Volume 16, issue 8, Octobre 2020

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Author
Professeur émérite de Thérapeutique. Université Sorbonne-Paris nord
* Correspondance

France –… the world! – is in turmoil at the coronavirus pandemic, which left China at the end of last year, and which is claiming many victims in our countries. If the number of people affected currently remains much lower than that of our seasonal flu (which regularly strikes between 1 and 4 million French people per year), its current mortality rate is ten to twenty times higher and explains this “battle-bustle”. Without going into the current epidemic, all of which are not yet known at the time of writing, it may be interesting to look back at the great epidemics of the past, to see what lessons have been learned from them… and sometimes forgotten!