Posted on 03/21/2020 5:37:40 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
With new cases of the new coronavirus disease, COVID-19, growing day by day, it’s natural to compare the new disease to other outbreaks in recent history.
There was the 1918 influenza, for example, that infected nearly a third of the world’s population before it fizzled out.
Then came other threatening viruses that appeared out of nowhere: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the H1N1 influenza in 2009, and Ebola.
Eventually, we got a handle on all of them.
But the fallout of each disease largely depends on other circumstances — when we catch it, how contagious and fatal it is, how hygienic people are, and how quickly a vaccine or cure becomes available.
The death rate isn’t the only determining factor regarding how devastating and deadly a pandemic will be, according to Dr. Christine Kreuder Johnson, a UC Davis professor of epidemiology and ecosystem health and researcher on USAID’s Emerging Pandemic Threats PREDICT project.
Here, we’ll take a look at how COVID-19 stacks up to other major outbreaks so far:
The 1918 Spanish flu epidemic was the deadliest flu season we know of, infecting about one-third of the world’s population.
“The 1918 pandemic strain of influenza was new and novel for most people under the age of 40 or 50, but that’s where the death rate really was high — that’s different than the usual flu,” said Dr. Mark Schleiss, a pediatric infectious disease specialist with the University of Minnesota.
Back then, scientists didn’t know viruses caused disease, and we didn’t yet have a vaccine or antivirals to help prevent or treat influenza, nor did we have antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections.
Life was also very different back then — for one, we were in the middle of a war and soldiers carried the virus with them all over the world. People were also living in very crowded conditions and had extremely poor hygiene — this helped the disease build and build, according to Johnson.
The flu strikes every year, but no two seasons are exactly the same.
Because strains mutate each year, it can be hard to predict what will hit. Unlike COVID-19, we have effective vaccines and antiviral medications that can help prevent and reduce the severity of the flu.
Additionally, many people have residual immunity to the flu from years past, as our bodies have seen the flu before.
We don’t have any immunity to COVID-19, and it appears to be more contagious and fatal than the flu so far, but this could very well change as we learn more.
SARS is another type of coronavirus that came out of China and spread quickly through respiratory droplets. Though the SARS death rate was higher than COVID-19, COVID-19 has already claimed more lives.
According to Johnson, contact tracing — or monitoring people in close contact with those who contracted it — was really effective with SARS, largely because symptoms were severe and therefore easier to identify and contain.
In addition, Schleiss said the SARS virus didn’t have the “fitness to persist in the human population,” which eventually led to its demise.
Schleiss added this doesn’t seem to be the case with COVID-19, which seems to be able to spread and thrive in the human body.
Overall, though SARS’ death rate was higher, COVID-19 has led to “more fatalities, more economic repercussions, more social repercussions than we [had] with SARS,” Johnson said.
Back in 2009, a new type of flu — an H1N1 strain — popped up and people panicked because we didn’t have a vaccine and the novel strain was spreading fast.
Like COVID-19, there was no immunity at the start of the outbreak. We did have antivirals to facilitate recovery, and by the end of 2009, we had a vaccine which — combined with higher levels of immunity — would provide protection in future flu seasons.
Still, it claimed over 12,000 lives in the United States.
Ebola was extremely deadly, killing up to 50 percent of those who got sick. But because it predominantly spread through bodily fluids like sweat and blood during the last stages of the disease, it wasn’t as contagious as COVID-19.
Plus, because symptoms were so severe, health officials were able to quickly identify those who’d been in contact with people who had it and isolate them.
“You don’t have relatively healthy people with the [Ebola] virus walking around shedding the virus — going on the bus, going shopping, going to work — like we do with this,” Johnson said.
Early evidence shows COVID-19 may be more contagious than the flu.
And some early reports say COVID-19 may have a higher death rate than the seasonal flu. But we may soon find out it’s less deadly than initial reports since so many people with COVID-19 have mild symptoms or are asymptomatic and therefore don’t see a doctor and are largely unaccounted for.
“The death rate really is something we just have to take with a grain of salt until we have enough information,” Johnson said. This is a rapidly evolving situation, and numbers and estimates are likely to change as we learn more.
According to Schleiss, it’s going to take herd immunity — which basically blocks out the virus when a large chunk of the population is immune from already being sick — along with an effective vaccine.
“We really, really need a vaccine,” he said, adding that because the Food and Drug Administration will need to prove a vaccine is safe, it could take a year or two — best case scenario.
We also have a lot more we need to learn: the prevalence of the infection along with how you contract the virus and all the different roads of transmission.
Until then, we’re going to need to practice social distancing to help minimize the number of people who contract it, says Johnson.
We’ll need to work together to limit exposure to one another — especially with older adults and people with underlying illness who have the greatest risk of developing severe symptoms.
We don’t need to panic. Remember: The vast majority of COVID-19 cases are mild. But we do need to take action to contain the spread and protect those who are most vulnerable.
COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, isn’t the first threatening disease that’s surged around the world — nor will it be the last.
L8r
Don’t forget the Hong Kong flu of the late 60s. Over 50 million Americans were infected (about 25%) and over 1 million died worldwide.
Thank you for the data.
The most efficient way to get "herd immunity" is to let the virus run its course like we do every year with regular flu.
It would fizzle out on its own like a wildfire that runs out of brush.
Instead of shutting down the economy, we could have focused resourced on sheltering people at high risk while letting young & healthy people experience what, for them, would probably be a mild flu.
Anyone who does any comparison with this situation to any other "somewhat" similar is chasing a fools errand.
The polemics have got us to where we are today.
God only knows where it will get us tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year.
This is so common sensical that no one in government or media thinks of it.
I with ya, brother... sister... or whatever x or y you may be...
We’re only seeing the situation just before the beginning now. The most interesting thing about the novel coronavirus is the gotcha part. Then you’re trapped.
Good luck with that …
Of course data matters. Calm down.
This begs the question.....what is driving this??
My mom didn’t even go to the hospital.
She stayed in her bedroom and dad took care of me.
I suspect that the virus has been around since Dec/Jan in the US and an unknown of people have already gotten it over the Winter and assumed it was bad cold or mild flu and treated it as such.
That math doesn't add up. 50 million/500 million = 10%. All the other death rates were deaths / number infected, so this one shouldn't be deaths / population which is the only way 2% could be calculated.
Apparently cant say Hong Kong flu according to the left that is racist and stuff..but dont forget the German Measles, I dont think they take offense
I’m pretty sure I had it, couldn’t breath worth a damn and had a high fever for a week , basically slept it off
They left out the influenza outbreak of 2012-2013 which killed 56,000 in the USA. But, there was no political angle.
Pretty sure that’s what I went through in Jan. Aggravating cough, sore joints, low on energy...the flu. Went away after 3 weeks.
Our crazy governor (Asterisk Inslee) has shut schools, restaurants, nail salons, hair salons, and so forth. Instead of willie-nillie destroying jobs and the economy, he should have:
1. Encourage those who can work or study from home to do just that. Those jobs (engineering, sales, legal) and the economy would be only slightly affected.
2. For manufacturing jobs, mandate that employers document hourly handwashing (apparently soap works better than hand sanitizer for this virus). You cannot build an airplane over the internet.
3. For small businesses (restaurants, nail salons, …), mandate that all touchable surfaces be disinfected twice (or whatever) a day.
4. For small businesses, mandate that everyone who works there or goes there wears a mask. Yes, masks are not effective for those who aren’t sick, but it is a simple, nonintrusive, pro-economy thing to do.
5. Divide the population into seven groups by their last name. Then each group has one day a week to do their shopping and other stuff. That will help the “social distancing” aspect of virus containment.
6. Asterisk Inslee up and closed all public and private schools for six weeks, regardless of locale. Bad plan. What he should have done was said that schools in areas with high incidences of infection would be closed for two weeks. After one week, there would be a reassessment. If infections in that area were still increasing, keep them closed for another week. In the meantime, touchable surfaces (tables, chairs, doorknobs, sinks, whatever) would have to be disinfected mid-day. In addition, ozone generators should be run overnight to ensure the virus is exterminated. Not sure if ozone has been proven to kill Covid-19, but it is deadly against other viruses.
Anyone else have some reasonable, common-sense ideas to add to the list?
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