On Jan. 9, 2018, armed with 1940s-vintage flu vaccine technology and supported by only anemic funding for developing truly revolutionary vaccines, the world is woefully unprepared for the next influenza pandemic, and the Trump administration ignored the problem, two experts wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece.

The authors noted that infamous “Spanish flu” pandemic of 1918-19 killed 50 million to 100 million people worldwide – at a time when the globe held only a quarter of the population it now houses.