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.

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.

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

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

It's a title, not a series of facts

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...

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

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

Freedom Fries

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