Corona Daily 089: That Pandemic and This Pandemic

This week, the USA and UK are kind of celebrating the end of the pandemic, in their respective countries. America has allowed people not to wear masks, both outdoors and indoors, provided one is fully vaccinated. However, since vaccination doesn’t create a visible tattoo for others to see, the maskless mingling is based on trust. In Britain, since yesterday, people are madly hugging, a revenge for year-long missed hugs.

In Brazil and India, systems are overwhelmed and broken. Far more patients than hospital beds. Far more bodies than pyres at the crematorium.

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When will the pandemic end, I mean truly end in the whole world and not specific parts of it? The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic may offer some lessons.

Laura Spinney, the author of Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World lives in France. In France, she says, there are 170,000 monuments to World War I, but not a single one to the pandemic. Despite the pandemic killing 50-100 million globally, many more than the world war. Wars produce enough material for novels, films, have good and evil, and plenty of human drama. (Think Mahabharata or War and Peace). Spanish flu apparently produced fewer stories. In that book, the author says that wars destroy both infrastructure and people. Pandemic usually kills only people, so it is easier to rebound once it is over.

Covid-19 Pandemic has offered enough human stories, I think. Not having experienced a world war, for most people this is the first experience of a global shock.

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One key difference is that in 1918, infectious diseases were the major killer anyway. Until last year, cancer or heart disease is what would kill modern people. Alzheimer’s worries people more than measles.

The other thing is the 2020 media: Television and internet have ensured everyone in the world fully understands the global nature of the pandemic. One hundred years ago, in the absence of visual media, the perceived impact was essentially local.

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John Barry wrote: The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

He says the 1918 pandemic began in spring, with its first wave not deadlier than influenza. A more contagious and more lethal variant caused the deadly second wave. Then it also seemed to disappear. In March 1919, another variant triggered a third wave less deadly than the second, but more lethal than seasonal flu. First wave illness protected against the second wave (meaning people who were infected in the first wave were spared in the second). But neither the first nor second wave infections could protect against the variant in the third wave. In the absence of vaccines, the immune system of the survivors kept improving, and turned the virus into an ordinary seasonal flu virus.

That is expected to be the best case scenario this time as well. Coronavirus turning into an annual flu-like virus that kills, but doesn’t require any lockdowns.

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As far as society was concerned, in the USA, only during the second wave were schools, theatres and salons shut. Masks were introduced. One big difference was the duration of the restrictions and lockdowns. The 1918 disease usually affected a given community for 6 to 8 weeks, and restrictions lasted 3-5 weeks. The working people’s behavior didn’t alter significantly.

This time, the world has accepted the Zoom way of working, and at least partially it is likely to remain longer than the virus.

Spanish flu was more active in winters. That had triggered a naïve hope of safety in summers. Brazil and India have shown there is no real correlation this time.

On 28 September 1918, Philadelphia organized the Liberty Loan parade to celebrate the soldiers returning from the WW. Intellectuals opposed that gathering. Ignoring them, the patriotic event gathered 200,000 people. Within the next few days, 47,000 fresh cases were reported and 12,000 people died. The second wave was particularly deadly for the 25-35 year olds.

The world would be a better place if Presidents and Prime Ministers were students of history.

Ravi