The pandemic that cancelled the Copa America… in 1918

SAO PAULO – “Rio is a giant hospital,” screamed one headline.

“No doctors, no medicine,” said another.

“Government criminally negligent,” decried a third.

With such damning words splashed in giant print across the front pages, Brazil decided it had little choice but to postpone the Copa America football tournament.

No, not this year’s highly controversial, Covid-19-battered event – the 1918 edition, which was called off over the Spanish flu.

With the clock ticking down to the 1918 “South American National Teams’ Championships,” as the world’s oldest-running international football tournament was then known, the planet was in…