American Samoa Dodged a Pandemic in 1918. Here’s What We Learned.

When a deadly pandemic spread across the globe in 1918, American Samoa, a small constellation of islands colonized by the United States at the turn of the 20th century, recorded no infections, practically an epidemiological miracle. A few dozen miles away, Samoan islands occupied by New Zealand were wracked by influenza on a terrifying scale. Today, just over a century later, the territories’ divergent fates hang ominously over a new health crisis.