By Kirk Callan Smith
What was it like in El Dorado County during the 1918 pandemic? A review of local newspapers published 102 years ago reveals parallels with the current COVID-19 outbreak. Newspapers in the area then were the Placerville Republican and the Mountain Democrat; upcountry was t
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
SUBMITTED
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.