A TALE OF TWO PANDEMICS

 

Long ago when I served on my home county’s land-use planning committee, we heard about “hundred-year floods,” which sometimes failed to appear and sometimes doubled up.  The theory was that major events were rare enough to classify as once in a century.

Today we have enough perspective to recognize major global pandemics as “hundred year floods.”

Near the height of the First World War, which claimed an estimated 11 million military and civilian lives, the “Spanish Flu” piled misery upon misery.  Named for King Alfonso, an early survivor, the Great War pandemic is commonly believed to have arisen in early 1918, lasting to the spring of 1920.  

Unlike the Covid 19 virus, which certainly emerged in Wuhan, China, under still mysterious circumstances, the Spanish Flu has not been positively identified as to origin.  Various theories have been advanced, most commonly for the United States, but including Europe and China.  In any case, the Great War provided an ideal breeding ground for the virus with huge numbers of people living close together for extended periods.

Perhaps 500 million people—about one-third of the global population—contracted Spanish Flu with fatality all over the map, ranging from 17 to 100 million.  Why it ended remains unclear, but epidemiologists suspect warm weather and something approaching “herd immunity” as major factors.

Were it possible, pandemic time travelers would recognize the situation whether they advanced to 2020 or regressed to 1918.  The defensive measures had much in common: masking, distancing, frequent hand washing, quarantine, and closing or restricting public facilities such as schools and many businesses.

A century ago health professionals were uncertain whether the pandemic was viral or bacterial—it was not confirmed until the 1930s.  Only in 2005 did a lengthy study finally map the Spanish Flu’s genome—the generic composition of the organism.

Additional pandemics arose from Asia in 1957 (c. 1 million deaths) and 1968 (1 million or more), Russia in 1977 (700,000) and swine flu in 2009 (nearly 500,000).

As of this month, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore places Wuhan Virus deaths at 2.8 million among 130 million cases in 200 countries.  

Despite President Donald Trump’s cutting vaccine production from years to months, public confidence in the national health bureaucracy has waned in the past year.  Originally the head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases said Covid 19 “is not something for citizens of the United States to worry about.”  

Subsequently NIAID and the Centers for Disease Control modified the official line, evolving from masking is unnecessary to more recently recommending two and even three masks.  Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of NIAID since 1984, famously conceded that his early message against masking was intentionally misleading in order to preserve the supply for medical personnel and first responders.  Omitted from the discussion is why manufacturers of masks could not have directed their products to the desired users.

Critics note that Dr. Fauci completed his residency in 1968 and has not practiced medicine in the 53 years since.  That may or may not be a fair criticism but it does lend perspective.

Aside from an understandable early confusion and uncertainty surrounding the Wuhan virus (there were no Covid 19 authorities), there’s suspicion of the health bureaucracy cooking the Covid books.  Throughout the pandemic, some jurisdictions have required any death in which covid is present to be certified as THE mortal cause.  The fact is, we may never know the actual number.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain skeptical of the need to stifle the economy, stop classroom teaching, and isolate individuals from families and friends indefinitely.  This comment from a former Army aviator is representative:

“I fly single-engine, single-pilot helicopters in wars, on three continents, in the mountains, in the desert, over water, at night, in the arctic, on wildfires, in the clouds and teach touchdown emergency procedures, long line, rescue hoist, gunnery, night goggles, and mountain flying in two languages in the third world.   A bad case of the flu…one with a 99.98% survival rate, let’s just say does not frighten me much.  I’ll take those odds without the government telling what’s dangerous and what isn’t.”

The bottom line appears to be: you cannot hide from a pathogen.  Quarantining the healthy while sending infectious patients into populations of the most vulnerable, as did five Democrat governors, is the opposite of what is indicated. 

The obvious wise course, followed by few jurisdictions, was to protect the vulnerable while letting the less susceptible develop non-fatal cases, in order to create community  (herd) immunity. States with the most stringent lockdowns suffered higher mortality than those that maintained the most freedom and human dignity.

Part of the problem was lack of data from China, but more deadly, in the view of civil libertarians, has been the apparent statist urge for control of more people.