1918 influenza and COVID-19

Dalhousie University

September 30, 2020

1918 influenza aka the Spanish flu was the deadliest pandemic of the 20th century as the COVID-19 is of the 21st century. According to centers for disease control and prevention, influenza and COVID-19 are contagious respiratory illnesses, and both are caused by viruses; although via different ones. The Spanish flu killed over a 50 million people in just over 18 months, and it surprisingly killed many healthy young adults as opposed to COVID-19 being the reason for deaths of senior citizens or people with compromised immune system. Although COVID-19's 1.01 million death so far seems puny compared to 50 million deaths caused by the Spanish flu in 1918, we have to remember that it was playing with the numbers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic has led people to think of it as something insignificant, and kept many in a selfish bubble until it started hitting virtually every neighborhood. Another thing to note is that even though influenza of 1918 was names as Spanish flu, it did not originate from Spain. Spain only got itself associated with the name as it was the only country not censoring or reporting fake numbers. Spain got their name associated with a deadly plague by being completely honest to the world about their numbers. If we come to think of it, it has only been a century since 1918 and we are already into another massive pandemic. Even though lesson was learned from the Spanish flu that no matter how advanced we get with the vaccines and other remedies there is always a chance for a potential outbreak of the same disease, and it has been predicted well before our current pandemic took its massive form. Spanish flu left a permanent scar on many people who had to face it. We could've taken proper actions against the latter pandemics way before their arrival. The reading says, it is not impossible for another influenza outbreak to happen. While it was more of a prophecy, it seems that we have been able to learn very little about a possibility of a pandemic to happen until we started seeing one in real life.