Nick,
You underestimate the ability of lazy minds to latch onto a grain of truth and run with it. I think mankind has a propensity to explain the origin of a mysterious strain of death, then assign blame to some place or group solely based on pop news repetition.
The Spanish flu reportedly wiped out 50-100M. Many scientists over the years studied evidence frozen by time and concluded that, while the flu had spread in Europe, there was earlier evidence of it first appearing "in Kansas in March 1918 and then in April in France, Germany and the United Kingdom."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu
Feel free to look elsewhere for other data.
I don't recall anyone else repeatedly nick-naming COVID19, "the Wuhan flu" as much as our just-departed dear leader along with his other pointed, country-of-origin names such as ChinaFlu and KungFlu. His words are followed - about 74M voters or about 47% of votes cast in the last election.
By all accounts, the Spanish flu label should be dropped and more accurately called the US or French or German or English flu. Racial supremacy adherants will add whatever derogatory term that suits their purpose or stay with Spanish flu. There already is a name for COVID19. Maybe we assign a proper name based on the country with the highest number of COVID cases or fatalities. Uh oh.