Commentary: What if Louis Armstrong had succumbed to the last pandemic?

As we continue to confront the coronavirus pandemic, it's worth remembering that roughly a century ago an influenza pandemic similarly wreaked havoc around the world and swept through the city that invented jazz: New Orleans.

Between Sept. 8, 1918 and March 15, 1919, the Crescent City suffered 3,362 influenza-related deaths - almost 1% of New Orleans' population and twice the national rate, according to the Historic New Orleans Collection, a repository of data and primary-source documentation. Another analysis, from the University of Michigan, tabulates that "between October 1918 and April 1919, the city experienced a staggering 54,089 cases