The sars2 virus first showed up in Spain in April of 2019 (26/06/2020 Recerca,Medrxiv), then italy in September (doi/10.1177/0300891620974755) and then on Nov 16 in France (rfi fr/en/france/20200520), and finally China on November 17.
The "spanish flu" was called that for political reasons as it had nothing to do with spain (but the brits/us were annoyed at them at the time). It ended up being blamed on Chinese railroad workers but it turns out the disease had shown up first in Paris the previous spring of 1917.
In both cases the spread of the virus from Europe to China and then the world. But in 1918 China lost 5M lives, whereas with cvid, a little over 5000 (worldometers dot info/coronavirus/country/china) - and that's with a much larger population 400 MIllion vs. 1.408 Billion.