[tntn]

HN title is not good. Original title is "U.S. Life Expectancy Drops for Third Year in a Row, Reflecting Rising Drug Overdoses, Suicides."

The comparison is between the last three years and 1915-1918, but the Spanish flu was just getting going in 1918.

EDIT: folks just arriving, the HN title has changed since I commented. It previously said "worst trend since Spanish flu," or something.

[ilikehurdles]

The title is fine, and reflects the factual subtitle immediately below the headline. There is no requirement to post the article headline as-is on HN.

[tntn]

But it doesn't reflect the factual subtitle. The title here says 1918, but the true trend is 1915-1918, which had a bit of a war as well.

> There is no requirement to post the article headline as-is on HN.

There is. From the guidelines:

> Otherwise [i.e. not excessive clickbait] please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.

[ilikehurdles]

Apologies, you're correct. I think focusing on the year or years will bury the lede in any case.

[trentlott]

It is commonly known as "the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic"

It's a title, not a series of facts

[dang]

The submitted title was "Drop in US life expectancy trend not seen since 1918 influenza epidemic". A moderator changed it because it broke the site guideline: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Submitters: Cherry-picking a detail from an article is editorializing, so please don't do that. If you want to say what you think is important about the topic, please do so in a comment, where your view is on a level playing field with everyone else's.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

[spanxx]

> Spanish flu of 1918

It was not Spanish. It's origins come from the battlefields of WWI.

[RmDen]

Everyone knows it as the Spanish flu.. it's called like that because the Spanish newspapers didn't censor these deaths like the other countries that were busy with World War I

[tntn]

Next you're probably going to tell me about French fries, right?

[simonh]

Freedom Fries

[derefr]

Hawaiian pizza does not come from Hawaii, and yet that is still its proper name (in English, at least.)