I have read about the 1918 Flu for many years. It is something that epidemiologists have focused on since then. There have been countless papers written.
Most of the response in 1918 was the same as the response in 2020. It was just as ineffective.
Only the death rates were far worse during the 1918 Flu.
As I recall, there were a few isolated small communities in the US that did not become infected. They closed off all contact with the world early on. Masks and "social distancing" did not work and were discarded by the populace. People ceased to listen to the authorities. Also WW1 was raging and took all the media bandwidth (except in neutral Spain, where they reported on the Flu.)
This Flu took many more lives than the war, however. There are all sorts of death data that can be inaccurate , but the death toll was horrendous. Probably 4% of the world died.
The COVID virus is a different virus than the H1N1 1918 virus. Different Genome.
1918 virus targeted healthy young people, unlike yearly flu. COVID targets older people, like yearly flu.
There are all sorts of Hypotheses about why 1918 targeted young healthy adults. One Hypothesis is that the older population had some immunity due to previous Flu epidemics.
Another one states that the younger population had altered (bad) immunity due to previous infection but not good immunity because they were not old enough to have had an older previous Flu that offered at least some partial immunity.
These are just rational "guesses" and please do not hold me to these Hypotheses. I do not believe anyone knows for sure.
Also, I am purposefully not commenting on the various "vaccines".
I understand they were different viruses. My point was pandemics. And I agree, the response was ineffective; it was uninformed by any of the lessons learned from 1918.
But, my wife and I read and were prepared for the three year mess. Not much we could do, but at least we were mentally prepared and could sort out the wheat from the chaff. We were prepared for how people would behave.
Policy makers had the tools to do a better job. But in 1918 quarantine was a social responsibility, not a political liability. People understood their responsibility to others and were used to the idea due to tuberculosis and such. And we should've been better prepared and concerned about the (potential, now established) long term impacts of infection.
The major aspect I excuse is that all of the USA's emergency response was based on a REGIONAL disaster. It was expected that medical supplies and such would be available from unaffected areas to support the region that was impacted. Hard to deal with that one.
Early travel restrictions WOULD have helped. If we could stop airlines in 2001, we could have done it in 2019. BUt, "My rights" have overtaken "my responsibility to others".
This was a total lack of leadership. Instead we were stuck with follow-ship.
I used to follow the FEMA simulations that gamed out disaster responses. Nuclear accidents, anthrax, etc. It comes down to that whether you are a bus driver assigned to evacuation, or you are a community leader in an infected area (or in Congress, staff or spouse), you will take care of yourself at the expense of your assigned responsibility. Citizens in the impacted area are low on the food chain (at least when I looked at the regs related to anthrax vaccine distribution back in 2002).
I am not a prepper, but I do not expect anyone to ever "save" me.