Covid-19 was not like the Spanish flu in 1918

More than 100 years have passed since the Spanish flu caused many deaths worldwide. Nor does it have much in common with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Epidemics, in other words modern terminology, is an infectious disease that affects our most instinctive fears.

Humans have been living with the disease for at least 10,000 years ago, since our ancestors began cultivating and building permanent settlements.

US soldiers were treated for the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 in the hospital.(Photo: Alamy).

Compare lame?

In this war, it seems that disease always prevails. They know us well, attacking things we still consider to be strong compared to other species - social, community and the desire to talk about everything.

They are always one step ahead, turning those strengths into weaknesses, and once they appear, all we can do is limit damage.

Because the epidemic is scary , it's not surprising that people always compare it to the worst epidemic in history - the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. But is this a lame comparison? lame?

The virus that causes disease, Sars-CoV-2, is a new strain of the virus in humans, meaning that in theory we all have no immunity to it. It is very contagious, but we have not been able to determine its lethality. One way to measure this likelihood is to calculate a confirmed case death rate (CFR).

So far WHO has determined this ratio to be 3.4%, although some recent calculations by experts calculate the ratio to be about 1.4%, and if that is accurate then it is truly alarming.

Scientists are still arguing about the CFR of the 1918 Spanish flu, the reason being that there was no reliable test method for identifying people with flu, but the number often cited was 2, 5%.

Covid-19 has just appeared and cannot confirm the mortality rate of the disease will be at 3% in the near future.(Photo: AP).

Covid-19 has only been around for nearly 3 months, and the data on it is not yet comprehensive. Most researchers agree that it will take some time for us to know the real CFR.

By comparison, other epidemics of the 20th century, such as the 1957 Asian flu or the 1968 Hong Kong flu, had mortality rates close to 0.1% - similar to the current seasonal flu. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic also killed more than 600,000 people.

Old lesson

A major difference between the Spanish flu and Covid-19 was that the 1918 pandemic mainly affected people in their 20s to 40s , while Covid-19's favorite victims were the Over age 60.

In fact, the main reason why the 1918 pandemic was so terrible was because it drained the main labor force in society, at a time when governments did not have a welfare system for children and people. old.

Even the virus that caused Covid-19 and the virus that caused pandemic influenza belongs to two different families. Sars-CoV-2 belongs to the corona family, with its other brothers causing the SARS epidemic in 2002-2003 and MERS in 2012.

SARS and MERS are also more lethal than Covid-19 at this time, with mortality rates of 10% and 36%, respectively. However, the way these 3 diseases spread is very similar.

If the virus that causes the flu spreads rapidly and spreads evenly across each population cluster, then the corona virus tends to spread in clusters.

In theory, this feature makes it easier to control the spread of corona virus than the flu virus, and the fact that both MERS and SARS are controlled before they are spread globally.

Annelies Wilders-Smith, a professor of new infectious diseases at the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, said that lame comparisons to the flu have left many Western governments subjective, without measures. Strongly needed to prevent Covid-19 when possible.

"The short-term damage of controlling the virus seems to be high. But it's much lower than the long-term damage if not controlled," said Wilders-Smith.

Asians became victims of discrimination after the outbreak of Covid-19.(Photo: Shutterstock).

There is a lesson that we seem to have to relearn every time a new pandemic emerges - the xenophobic tendency and blame others. In 1918, before the pandemic was called the Spanish flu, Brazilians called it the German flu, Senegalese called it the Brazilian flu, the Poles called it Bolshevik disease and the Danes thought it's "flu from the South".

In fact, Spain was neutral during World War I and the press was free to report on the flu, other countries did not want to affect the fighting will of the soldiers, so they controlled the information strictly. gao about the plague, and that's why it is called the Spanish flu.

By 2020, that seems to have been repeated, now that people are starting to blame Chinese or Asians.

• Teachers and students create robots to serve people isolated because of the covid-19 epidemic
• The science explains how England fought the Covid-19 epidemic
• What is community immunity? Does it apply to Covid-19?