With COVID-19 Why Are We Not Heeding The Lessons From The 1918-1919 Pandemic?

The COVID-19 disease caused by the novel coronavirus is exponentially more fatal than the normal seasonal flu, in fact, it is closer to the mortality rate of the 1918-1919 pandemic. Armed with this knowledge and over a century of data and studies, why are so many not taking this more seriously?

Before we get into more details about the similarities between the two let’s clear up the misnomer about the name, “Spanish Flu” most often used when discussing the 1918-1919 flu pandemic. Although there is some question on origin, it is generally accepted that the first known case was an American soldier on a base in Kansas, not Spain. According to the CDC, the first outbreak of flu-like illnesses was detected in the U.S. in March of 1918, with more than 100 cases reported at Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas.

Spain was not hit especially badly compared to other countries but wartime censorship exaggerated the effects of the virus there. While Britain, France, Germany and the United States censored and restricted early reports, papers in Spain – as a neutral country – were free to convey all the horrid details of the pandemic. This made it look much worse there, so the unfortunate name spread with the disease around the world. The strain was actually H1N1,

There have been numerous strains of H1N1 since including the strains that were called swine flu and avian flu which resulted in the mass slaughter of these animals. Influenza viruses that are normally found in swine are known as swine influenza viruses (SIVs). The known SIV strains include influenza C and the subtypes of influenza A known as H1N1, H1N2, H3N1, H3N2 and H2N3.

The Spanish flu, also known as la grippe, La Gripe Española, or La Pesadilla, was an unusually severe and deadly strain of avian influenza, a viral infectious disease, that killed some 50 million people or more worldwide over about a year in 1918 and 1919. It was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history.

The 1918 flu caused an unusual number of deaths, possibly due to it causing a cytokine storm in the body. The current H5N1 bird flu, also an Influenza A virus, has a similar effect. The Spanish flu virus infected lung cells, leading to overstimulation of the immune system via release of cytokines into the lung tissue. This leads to extensive leukocyte migration towards the lungs, causing destruction of lung tissue and secretion of liquid into the organ. This makes it difficult for the patient to breathe. In contrast to other pandemics, which mostly kill the old and the very young, the 1918 pandemic killed unusual numbers of young adults, which may have been due to their healthy immune systems mounting a too-strong and damaging response to the infection.

Similarities And Differences Between Spanish Flu And COVID-19

COVID-19 has a similar effect on the body but there are also significant differences in the two. Spanish flu was even more infectious than COVID-19, caused symptoms much faster and was far more deadly, and unlike COVID-19, which poses the greatest risk to the elderly, Spanish flu targeted the young.

Despite the differences, the parallels between 1918 and 2020 are still striking. In both cases, there was no vaccine and no treatment for the disease along with an overriding fear that a besieged health care system might crack. In addition, the most effective response is social or physical distancing just as it was then. These methods are proven and the faster they are enacted the more effective they are in slowing a pandemic.

Interestingly enough, the same issues existed for authorities during the Spanish Flu pandemic that governments are dealing with today. Fear, panic, and mistrust, along with boredom, are causing people to stop social distancing today, just as they did a little over 100 years ago. The government officials that capitulated to the demands of their populace saw the greatest death tolls, those that aggressively practiced social distancing were more successful at keeping cases down. Cities that acted earliest and most forcefully — like St. Louis, which imposed a near total lockdown within two days of its first Spanish flu case — had much lower peak death rates than cities that hedged their bets — like New Orleans, Boston and Philadelphia.

Lessons To Be Learned From The Spanish Flu To Avoid Repeating History

#1 Stopping Social Distancing Too Soon

During the 1918 pandemic authorities stopped social distancing too soon after seeing some success. They thought they had a handle on the illness and their actions caused a second wave that was even more deadly than the first. San Fransisco held a huge parade to celebrate and less than two months later the disease had exploded in the city.

Across the country, Philadelphia suffered a similar fate. Even though 600 sailors from the Philadelphia Navy Yard had the Spanish flu in September 1918, the city didn’t cancel a parade scheduled for September 28, 1918. Three days later, Philadelphia had 635 new cases of the Spanish flu, according to the University of Pennsylvania Archives & Records Center. Soon after Philadelphia had the highest death toll in the United States.

St. Louis also had a parade scheduled but canceled it and the results were that after one month only 700 people had died in St. Louis while there were over 10,000 deaths in Philadelphia.

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

There are those that are pushing to reopen collegiate and professional sports without making sure that we are seeing declines in cases. We cannot allow this to happen, there is no social distancing in sports.

The lesson here is that just because we get on the other side of a peak doesn’t mean that it cannot peak again and possibly be worse. Areas that have few cases now could blow up if we open up too soon.

#2 Healthy People Can Be Victims Of Their Own Immune Systems

In the Spanish Flu pandemic, nearly 70% of deaths were in those from 18-50 years old with the most deaths averaging around 28 years old. With coronavirus, the elderly and those with underlying health problems are at higher risk for severe complications, but many young, healthy people are also getting severely sick with or dying from COVID-19.

The Spanish Flu affected younger people so much because the majority of those infected were young soldiers staying in close proximity in barracks during the war. There was a high mortality in training camps, probably much higher than was reported. The lesson here is that being young and strong doesn’t protect you against a disease like this, the strength of your immune system may actually be a detriment.

As mentioned in the beginning of this post, strong immune system responses called cytokine storms can cause a healthy immune system to become hyperactive and cause inflammation that overwhelms the lungs and other internal organs. In these cases it isn’t a weak immune system that kills but one that is too efficient.

#3 Experimental Drugs Can Do More Harm Than Good

Over the last century there have been many advances in medicine and technology that have made it easier to identify and treat disease, but the common denominator that holds us back in treating COVID-19 is the same that was dealt with during 1918-19. There is no vaccine and there is no cure. During the Spanish Flu there was far less scientific data to go on and they tried experimental drugs as well as natural treatments that sometimes had adverse effects.

Today, we are dealing with the same kind of issues, much of which has been brought on by the president giving uneducated medical advice about the malaria, lupus, and arthritis drug, hydroxychloroquine. This dangerous advice has actually resulted in deaths as well as hoarding of the drug that has caused shortages for those that legitimately need it. There have yet to be any substantial clinical trials that show its use to be effective in treating COVID-19 and in fact some trials have had to be stopped due to patients developing heart issues.

Coronavirus patients taking hydroxychloroquine, a treatment touted by President Trump, were no less likely to need mechanical ventilation and had higher deaths rates compared to those who did not take the drug, according to a study of hundreds of patients at US Veterans Health Administration medical centers. The study, which reviewed veterans’ medical charts, was posted Tuesday on medrxiv.org, a pre-print server, meaning it was not peer reviewed or published in a medical journal. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the University of Virginia.

We Could Have Second And Third Waves Worse Than The First

During the Spanish Flu the number of cases dropped during the summer of 1918 and it caused many to let their guard down, falsely believing that the worst of the virus was over. This proved to be completely wrong as the virus had mutated somewhere in Europe. This new strain was so virulent that it could kill a totally healthy young person within 24 hours of the first symptoms of infection.

Military ships disembarked from the English port city of Plymouth in August of 1918 with troops aboard that were unknowingly infected with the new mutated strain. These troops departed in ports in Freetown, in West Africa, Boston, and Brest, France among others and thus began the second wave of the global pandemic.

Much like the way the 1918 virus was spread, COVID-19 is also spread with large numbers of people traveling the world on airplanes and cruise ships in close quarters. A study also just came out showing that the Coronavirus that causes the disease has already mutated into at least 30 different strains. It was previously thought that this Coronavirus was not mutating but this new study has shown that hypothesis to be wrong.

From September through November of 1918, the death rate from the Spanish flu skyrocketed. In the United States alone, 195,000 Americans died from the Spanish flu in just the month of October. And unlike a normal seasonal flu, which mostly claims victims among the very young and very old, the second wave of the Spanish flu exhibited what’s called a “W curve”—high numbers of deaths among the young and old, but also a huge spike in the middle composed of otherwise healthy 25- to 35-year-olds in the prime of their life.

If we make the same mistake that was made with the Spanish Flu we risk similar results as those experienced in 1918-19. This is not the time to relax social distancing guidelines or reopen businesses when we are still seeing increases in COVID-19 cases and deaths and are nowhere near the guidelines for reopening. In addition we do not have adequate testing much less a reliable treatment or vaccine.

We must keep social distancing, increase testing, work diligently on developing a vaccine, and stockpile the masks, PPE, and ventilators we will inevitably need in the fall and winter when a potentially exponentially more deadly strain reappears along with the seasonal flu. We will also need to be prepared for the additional ICU hospital beds that will be needed. We are not prepared for that, and under the current administration we will not be.

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Storm Wolf Hall

Gregg “Storm Wolf” Hall is an SEO and Social Media Expert as well as prolific writer online with thousands of articles published in a wide array of interests and industries, with Expert Author status at Ezine Articles, the premier Article Directory on the internet. He has written under his given Indigenous name of Storm Wolf for several years now as that is the name most know him by.

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Coronavirus Reveals Health And Income Inequality

As the coronavirus cases have increased and the numbers of those dying skyrocket certain things become abundantly clear in the United States:

#1 Not only is there a major issue with health care in general but the lack of health care in communities of color is contributing to much higher mortality rates.

#2 Tens of millions of people have lost their health care because it was tied to their jobs.

#3 Even a minimum wage of $15 per hour isn’t enough to afford even a basic living in the United States and paying people less than this while they are risking their lives to keep everyone else alive is an insult on top of it.

#4 While individuals are being told they should have been better prepared multi-billion dollar corporations are saying they need a bailout after a couple of weeks with no income.

I could go on about some other issues such as how the stock market’s valuation being revealed for being way too high, the real estate bubble that is about to pop, and the bank failure that is going to take us into another Great Depression, but those subjects are for another article.

So, let’s take number one. According to data coming out of places like Detroit, Chicago, and New Orleans. According to a recent article from NPR, about 1 in 3 people who become sick enough to require hospitalization from COVID-19 were African American, according to hospital data from the first month of the U.S. epidemic released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Even though 33% of those hospitalized patients were black, African Americans constitute 13% of the U.S. population. By contrast, the report found that 45% of hospitalizations were among white people, who make up 76% percent of the population. And 8% of hospitalizations were among Hispanics, who make up 18% of the population.

These statistics prove that the U.S. is woefully underserving minorities and especially African Americans. This is an issue that the next president must address immediately. I say the next president because we know that the current president is a racist who could care less about higher mortality rates among African Americans and is more concerned with opening the economy back up than preventing loss of life.

Secondly, the loss of health care that was tied to jobs is a travesty, this again proves that Senator Bernie Sanders has been right all along. Health insurance should not be linked to one’s job and it is past time for the U.S. to get on par with the rest of the civilized world and stop placating health insurance companies. In all of the recent primary exit polls the majority of Americans have expressed support for Medicare for All.

As of the date of this post, over 17 million Americans have filed for unemployment and there are tens of millions more that are laid off that have not applied yet. No one knows how much longer the shut down will last and many businesses will not survive it no matter how many loans the government throws at the issue. In addition, we are going to see record foreclosures and mortgage companies failing due to this crisis. We have yet to begin seeing the long term damage being caused by this event.

On the third issue I listed, a living wage, there should be no argument from anyone. The federal minimum wage hasn’t been raised since 2009, the longest stretch in history that the minimum wage hasn’t been increased. Even a $15 minimum wage cannot cover basic living expenses in many places in the country for even one person, let alone a family. Adjusted for inflation and production, the minimum wage today should be well over $20 per hour. Plans to raise the minimum wage incrementally will not cut it either, every year the cost of living and inflation increase, eroding any possible benefit.

As the economy recovered from the economic downturn in the late 2000s, the richest Americans have only gotten wealthier, while nearly everyone else has gotten poorer. And under the Trump administration, income inequality has gotten even worse. Compensation for CEOs has skyrocketed, while minimum wage workers in many states now need to work at least two full-time jobs to make a living. There must be an increase in the minimum wage to an actual living wage. This was FDR’s goal, not a wage that no one can live on.

Lastly, we see many on the right stating that people who don’t have savings are being financially irresponsible. How in the hell are people supposed to have savings when they aren’t even making enough money to survive in the first place? About one third of the U.S. population lives at or near the poverty level and includes nearly 50% of the children of the country. Reference: https://www.povertyusa.org/facts

So, why are individuals being told they are financially irresponsible because they cannot go a week without a paycheck while corporations are begging for yet another bailout? In my opinion, if these corporations cannot manage their finances better then they need to be taken over by someone who can. They shouldn’t be allowed to use taxpayer dollars to buy their own stock as the airlines did with the last bailout. This time if they need money they should sell stock and dilute their ownership and control of their companies.

The same applies to fossil fuel companies. They have enjoyed government subsidies and returns over 1000% per year for decades, its time for them to diversify or die. Cruise lines shouldn’t even be in the conversation, they are foreign registered, hire mostly foreign nationals, send their profits offshore and pay zero in taxes.

We need leaders in government that take care of the people of this country first. The coronavirus crisis is demonstrating that capitalism cannot exist without the labor of the people and the economy cannot survive without the people spending money in it. If you want a strong economy then you cannot have over a third of the country living near poverty and half the country a paycheck away from being in the street. The key to a strong economy is paying people enough to have discretionary income to spend.

Giving more money to the wealthy to stash in offshore tax havens does nothing for the economy. It’s time to roll back the tax cuts for the wealthy enacted by Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Trump and return to a higher marginal tax rate like we had before. Cutting the top marginal tax rate is what created billionaires and increased poverty and income inequality. Billionaires do not make the economy stronger, neither does having a hundred million people living in poverty.

In closing let me say this. We cannot go back to the way things were. People are saying we need a return to normalcy. There is nothing normal about people living in poverty without health care, we need a change now and it is time they people demand it, not accept more of the same.