Pandemics and COVID-19

The last pandemic occurred a little over a century ago – the influenza pandemic of 1918. It killed more than 50 million people and travelled around the globe twice before abating. At the time, there were neither vaccines nor treatments. The infectious agent itself was misdiagnosed as a bacterium and only later was shown to be a virus. It completely altered our global civilization and required several years for society to return to normal. When it did, we entered what are now known as the “Roaring Twenties.” The Spanish Influenza, as it was named because the newspapers in Spain published much about it while governments in other countries forbade publication in an attempt to cover up the problem, was the last of a series of widespread infections that have afflicted various societies at various times over many centuries. They were transported by commercial or military transportation from country to country and then by individuals or groups within countries or via land-based transport to other countries. These included several bubonic plagues (from the Roman Empire to the Middle Ages); syphilis (brought from the New World to Europe); yellow fever (brought from Africa by slaves to the New World); smallpox, measles, other viruses (all brought from Europe by immigrants and which then decimated the immunologically naïve Native Americans and made conquest much easier - an unanticipated result); polio; and, influenza. All of these changed entire societies forever. The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) will do the same. It already is clear that our attention to the environment will be greatly intensified; our energy sources finally will shift to sustainable rather than extractable; the workplace is altered forever more; we now recognize that we need the touch, feel, and personal contact with one another.  We do not know the extent or duration of these changes yet but we are beginning to learn.

In recent memory (2009 – 10), the world dealt with the H1N1 swine influenza. At its conclusion, 57 million Americans had been sickened, 257,000 had been hospitalized, and over 11,000 died. This occurred from April 2009 through mid-January 2010. It had a severe impact on our society, but we did not shut down the country, did not put our economy at risk, did not jeopardize our way of life. Why is this epidemic different? Is it truly different or is our reaction to it different? The virus is a neutral agent. It is our reaction as a society that determines the medical and social consequences that follow.

Let us examine those consequences with respect to the coronavirus in some subsequent posts.