Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Indiana State Department of Health
Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization as of January 3, 2021, the Brazil Times created the following comparison of the deadly Spanish Flu to the current COVID-19 pandemic.
SPANISH FLU OUTBREAK
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During the officially estimated 820 days from 1918-1920, the Spanish Flu virus affected one-third of the worlds population (1.8 billion), with an estimated more than 500,000,000 infected (27.77%) and 50,000,000 deaths (2.777778% of the population) reported worldwide.
In America (103.2 million population), the virus, later identified as H1N1, is considered the most lethal in modern history, resulting in 650,000 deaths (.629845%). At the time, doctors didnt know influenza viruses even existed. Medical technology, pharmacology, and diagnostic testing were limited or were not created. Penicillin was not invented until 1928, and there were no flu antiviral drug
Don’t let a ‘good crisis’ go to waste
The generous allocation of new resources to meet pandemic-related challenges convinces us that the government, if committed, can make more money available for health. Photo: Anisur Rahman
The year 2020 was like no other in recent history. It saw, in the words of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom, a once-in-a-century health crisis , referring to the Covid-19 pandemic, which continues to rage across the world. The 1918-20 Spanish flu, of course, dwarfed the current pandemic in terms of numbers, infecting a third of the world s population and killing about 50 million. Notwithstanding the hundred-year gap and the difference in magnitude, there are some remarkable similarities between the two pandemics in the way people reacted to them. For example, both saw resistance to masks and hygiene etiquettes. A group self-styled Anti-Mask League was active in 1919 in America s San Francisco; during the current pandemic, salespersons in groceries
Detroit s 1918 holiday season was fairly average. Ours won t be. Darcie Moran, Detroit Free Press
A mother, having lost her husband to the pandemic two weeks prior, found herself at the mercy of a Wayne County probate court on Christmas Eve, trying to get access to $680 in the bank for Christmas.
“Last Christmas my husband filled the stockings. I thought, maybe – ” she stopped short while addressing a court worker.
The woman wasn’t named in the Detroit Free Press’ Christmas Day newspaper in 1918, when her story first ran in a brief entry several pages in, while returning World War I soldiers relayed tales of female German gunners, aghast, on the front page. But a little over 100 years after influenza and pneumonia took her spouse, the woman’s story echoes in a different year of pandemic woes and economic concerns, even as the holidays are set to look starkly different.
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The intense and personal fight to require masks during the second wave of Spanish flu in SF
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A masked man pretends to hold up two masked women on San Francisco Bay in this 1918 photo, likely as a joke for resembling a bandit.OpenSFHistory / wnp14.13145.jpg
A resurgent virus killing again. A tireless health expert facing hostility to mask-wearing. Local officials delivering mixed messages on safety and being caught not practicing what they preach.
The second wave of Spanish influenza in December 1918 and January 1919 resembles the most recent surge of COVID-19 in some ways. San Franciscans back then were weary after an autumn of restrictions that were tougher than in most other cities though they did appear to help reduce cases and deaths.
In many ways, life wasn’t so different then? More than a century ago, the world was so very different, of course, but there was commonality. Concerns about the safety of family gatherings, gift-giving and attending church services were just as rife that December as now, with hopes of having a merry Christmas - weeks after the Great War ended - thrown into disarray.
Due to the Spanish Flu? The First World War claimed the lives of some 20 million people by the time it ended in November 1918, but as the soldiers returned home, they brought the the deadly flu virus with them - thought to have incubated in the cramped conditions of the trenches.