Roughly 100 years ago..and there was no Internet or mass travel back then...just Nature trying to tamp down man...what's old is new again..

The Influenza Pandemic of 1918

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.

https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/

Blame the Pangolins, and those who would eat them...

Did pangolins spread the China coronavirus to people?
Genetic sequences of viruses isolated from the scaly animals are 99% similar to that of the circulating virus — but the work is yet to be formally published.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00364-2