Uh, what? I absolutely was taught about the 1920s pandemic. Not so much about the disease itself or how the pandemic was handled, admittedly, but certainly about how it affected society and the politics of the time. It wasn't a whole unit by itself, but it was definitely more than a footnote.
You could maybe argue atom bombs and cold war was a similar time for such crucial moments in humanity, but now we also got climate change, another rise in fascism, and we got tons of nukes on top. And plenty of other things which I won't bother to delve into because I should sleep.