Do societies learn from pandemic crisis and adapt their stated and revealed health-related behavior? To answer this question, we link overmortality during the 1918 influenza to the political support of compulsory vaccination and to vaccination behavior before and after the 1918 influenza. We rely on the 1922 popular vote in Grisons when Grisons’ voters have to decide about compulsory vaccination and on local smallpox vaccination campaigns from 1907 to 1933. We find that higher overmortality during the 1918 influenza reduces both the political support for compulsory vaccination and revealed vaccination against pediatric diseases, while vaccination hesitancy surged. By contrast, neither other popular votes nor pre-1918 vaccination behavior correlate with overmortality. An analysis of all popular votes around this time reveals that communities with high flu mortality became more skeptical towards healthcare claims and regulations while other political domains like infrastructure, law and order or education are not negatively affected by the influenza. Our results shed novel insight on the public reaction caused by to most deathly pandemic in recent centuries and discovers parallels to the COVID-19 pandemic.