From News Nation:
“COVID-19 has killed about as
many Americans as the 1918-19 flu”
(In this November 1918 photo made
available by the Library of Congress, a nurse takes the pulse of a patient in
the influenza ward of the Walter Reed hospital in Washington. Historians think
the pandemic started in Kansas in early 1918, and by winter 1919 the virus had
infected a third of the global population and killed at least 50 million
people, including 675,000 Americans. Some estimates put the toll as high as 100
million.)
COVID-19 has now killed about as
many Americans as the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic did — approximately 675,000.
And like the worldwide scourge of a century ago, the coronavirus may never
entirely disappear from our midst. Instead, scientists hope the virus that
causes COVID-19 becomes a mild seasonal bug as human immunity strengthens
through vaccination and repeated infection. That would take time. “We hope it
will be like getting a cold, but there’s no guarantee,” said Emory University
biologist Rustom Antia, who suggests an optimistic scenario in which this could
happen over a few years.
For now, the pandemic still has
the United States and other parts of the world firmly in its jaws. The
delta-fueled surge in new infections may have peaked, but U.S. deaths still are
running at over 1,900 a day on average, the highest level since early March,
and the country’s overall toll stood at close to 674,000 as of Monday morning,
according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University, though the real number
is believed to be higher.
Winter may bring a new surge,
though it will be less deadly than last year’s, according to one influential
model. The University of Washington model projects an additional 100,000 or so
Americans will die of COVID-19 by Jan. 1 , which would bring the overall U.S.
toll to 776,000.
The 1918-19 influenza pandemic
killed an estimated 675,000 Americans in a U.S. population one-third the size
of what it is today. It struck down 50 million victims globally at a time when
the world had one-quarter as many people as it does now. Global deaths from
COVID-19 now stand at more than 4.6 million. The Spanish flu death toll numbers
are rough guesses, given the incomplete records of the era and the poor
scientific understanding of what caused the illness. The 675,000 figure comes
from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The ebbing of
COVID-19 could happen if the virus progressively weakens as it mutates and more
and more humans’ immune systems learn to attack it. Vaccination and surviving
infection are the main ways the immune system improves. Breast-fed infants also
gain some immunity from their mothers. Under that optimistic scenario,
schoolchildren would get mild illness that trains their immune systems. As they
grow up, the children would carry the immune response memory, so that when they
are old and vulnerable, the coronavirus would be no more dangerous than cold
viruses. The same goes for today’s vaccinated teens: Their immune systems would
get stronger through the shots and mild infections. “We will all get infected,”
Antia predicted. “What’s important is whether the infections are severe.” Something
similar happened with the H1N1 flu virus, the culprit in the 1918-19 pandemic.
It encountered too many people who were immune, and it also eventually weakened
through mutation. H1N1 still circulates today, but human immunity acquired from
infection and vaccination has triumphed. Getting an annual flu shot now
protects against H1N1 and several other strains of flu. To be sure, flu kills
between 12,000 and 61,000 Americans each year, but on average, it is a seasonal
problem and a manageable one.
Before COVID-19, the 1918-19 flu
was universally considered the worst pandemic disease in human history. Whether
the current scourge ultimately proves deadlier is unclear. In many ways, the
1918-19 flu — which was wrongly named Spanish flu because it first received
widespread news coverage in Spain — was worse. Spread by the mobility of World
War I, it killed young, healthy adults in vast numbers. No vaccine existed to
slow it, and there were no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections.
And, of course, the world population was much smaller than it is today. Yet jet
travel and mass migrations threaten to increase the toll of the current
pandemic. Much of the world is unvaccinated. And the coronavirus has been full
of surprises. Medical historian Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan
said he is continually astounded by the magnitude of the disruption the
pandemic has brought to the planet. “I was gobsmacked by the size of the
quarantines” the Chinese government undertook initially, Markel said, “and I’ve
since been gob-gob-gob-smacked to the nth degree.” The lagging pace of U.S.
vaccinations is the latest source of his astonishment. “Big pockets of American
society — and, worse, their leaders — have thrown this away,” Markel said of
the opportunity to vaccinate everyone eligible by now.
Just under 64% of the U.S.
population has received as least one dose of the vaccine, with state rates
ranging from a high of approximately 77% in Vermont and Massachusetts and lows
around 46% to 49% in Idaho, Wyoming, West Virginia and Mississippi. Globally,
about 43% of the population has received at least one dose, according to Our
World in Data, with some African countries just beginning to give their first
shots. “We know that all pandemics come to an end,” said Dr. Jeremy Brown,
director of emergency care research at the National Institutes of Health, who
wrote a book on influenza. “They can do terrible things while they’re raging.” COVID-19
could have been far less lethal in the U.S. if more people had gotten
vaccinated faster, “and we still have an opportunity to turn it around,” Brown
said. “We often lose sight of how lucky we are to take these things for
granted.” The current vaccines work extremely well in preventing severe disease
and death from the variants of the virus that have emerged so far.
It will be crucial for scientists
to make sure the ever-mutating virus hasn’t changed enough to evade vaccines or
to cause severe illness in unvaccinated children, Antia said. Such shifts would
require an adjustment in defense strategies and would mean a longer path to a
post-pandemic world. If the virus changes significantly, a new vaccine using
the technology behind the Pfizer and Moderna shots could be produced in 110
days, a Pfizer executive said Wednesday. The company is studying whether annual
shots with the current vaccine will be required to keep immunity high. One
plus: The coronavirus mutates at a slower pace than flu viruses, making it a
more stable target for vaccination, said Ann Marie Kimball, a retired
University of Washington professor of epidemiology. So, will the current
pandemic unseat the 1918-19 flu pandemic as the worst in human history? “You’d
like to say no. We have a lot more infection control, a lot more ability to
support people who are sick. We have modern medicine,” Kimball said. “But we
have a lot more people and a lot more mobility. … The fear is eventually a new
strain gets around a particular vaccine target.” To those unvaccinated
individuals who are counting on infection rather than vaccination for immune
protection, Kimball said, “The trouble is, you have to survive infection to
acquire the immunity.” It’s easier, she said, to go to the drugstore and get a shot.
^ The 1918-1919 Flu (also known
as the Spanish Flu) Pandemic killed 50 Million Worldwide (675,000 Americans out
of a population of 105 Million.) There was no Flu Vaccine widely available
until the 1930s (and that Vaccine has to be changed every year.)
The 2020-Present Day Covid
Pandemic has so-far killed 4,689,629
Worldwide (674,000 Americans out of a population of 330 Million.)
On average: 1,900 American Men,
Women and Children die every day from Covid. The vast majority (98.3% are
Unvaccinated.)
674,000 deaths out of 330 Million
Americans may not seem like a high number unless it is your: Mother, Father,
Brother, Sister, Wife, Husband, Daughter, Son, Friend, etc.
Please get the Covid Vaccine to
stop the high numbers of hospitalizations and deaths and to protect yourself
and your family. ^
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