Week 22: How did the Covid pandemic compare with the ‘Spanish Flu’ in 1918?

 

                                                Mainly from New York Times

 

Some things were remarkably similar: the main medical treatments in 1918 were social distancing, hand washing and face masks, combined with school closures.  Careful records were made during ‘Spanish flu’, but this came in three waves over the next 2 years.

 

But there the similarities end – people unaffected by  the pandemic were not anxious about other healthy people, and there were no tests for the organism responsible.  In New York the alleged organism was in fact a bacterium, called haemophilus influenzae. A vaccine mistakenly targeted this organism. The organism actually responsible was the H1N1 influenza virus, and it arrived in New York on a Norwegian ship on August 11^th 1918, with 21 cases on board. By the time it ended, 50 million were dead world wide, and 675K of these were in the US. Viruses could not be seen then, electron microscopes had not been invented.

 

Spanish flu’  killed more people, in less time, than World War 1. Spain was not more badly affected than other countries, but US and European countries censored the news, while Spain was less defensive, and felt free to publish all the (often unpleasant) details of the illness.

 

Elevation of death rate

Town	‘Spanish flu’	Covid-19	(Others for cf. )
New York	x3.97	x5.83	x2.42 US 2005
Boston	x3.61	x2.27	Hur’n. Katrina
London	x4.* 2nd of 3 waves	x3.02	x6.5 Japan 2011 Quake, tsunami

 

(* = A different study, nothing like x4 in either the 1^st or the 3^rd iterations. Most world cities were close to x2 accelerations in 1918).

 

There was no special respiratory equipment in 1918. Theatres stayed open, public health announcements before performances, focused on coughing and spitting. Businesses stayed open. Nurses entered homes and witnessed horrible scenes like earlier plague years: eg. a dead husband from pandemic lying on the floor besides a woman who had given birth to twins, but had no food other than an apple for some days. People either had the disease, or were thought of as healthy, and were not avoided by others. Public health campaigns flourished, in the form of free handouts, leaflets and posters. These targeted unprotected sneezing and coughing, and spitting in the streets. The City’s boy scouts paroled the streets, and would give spitters a card explaining that they were ‘endangering the city’.

 

Case fatality rate 2.5%, more deadly than usual flu.

Expectation of life in 1917 was 51 years; this decreased to 39 years in 1918!

Dr Vaughan reported that 100’s of soldiers approached hospitals, and were

admitted in groups of >10; faces bluish,  bringing up blood stained sputum and  a bad cough. By morning dead bodies were stacked near the morgue.

 

In the present pandemic, the world has made great progress in medical treatments, and people are less scared than they were in 1918.

In UK and Sweden, in covid-10 pandemic virus was at first thought to be ordinary influenza, and ideas of “herd immunity” were mentioned to politicians.

 

Conclusion: The death rates are fairly close, but the prevailing horror of  ‘Spanish flu’ exerts a chilling effect over the more understandable anxieties we deal with today. It is worth noting the three waves, before the 1919 pandemic were defeated.

 

New unwelcome news:  In the news this week Mr Blair has resurfaced, and has made a strong speech about what we should now do. Apparently the virus cannot be eliminated, but we can try to contain it. Older people may remember the days when Mr Blair was partnered by President Bush, and made similar sweeping statements about the war in Iraq. He is echoing the UK government’s latest decision that the virus cannot be eliminated, despite the places in the world who have got very close to doing exactly that.  People don’t change very much.

 

David Goldberg

Sunday 16 August. Little sign of optimism for us extreme oldies!