system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Was the Spanish flu pandemic a large enough selection pressure to cause a change in the human genome detectable in some populations today?

I've recently finished Adam Rutherford's 'a brief history of everyone who's ever lived'. He talked about how the black death and the bubonic plague caused greater variation in the human genome amongst particular populations.

I was wondering whether the spanish flu would have caused a large enough selection pressure to cause detectable changes in the human genome still noticeable today.
gpt
Its a matter of degree.

Let's say an isolated event happens in an area that favors Genotype 1 over Genotype 2.  Over time that will impact natural selection.  But if the event stops, and the populations interbreed that limited impact gets diffused.

So killing a few percent of the world's population may have had some impact, but it was a short-lived event.  It wasn't as widespread or long-lasting as the Black Death.