Fighting the coronavirus pandemic is both easier and more difficult than it would be to fight the 1918 flu pandemic, World Health Organization officials said Friday.
“With more connectivity, the virus has a better chance of spreading,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a briefing. “But at the same time, we also have the technology to stop it, and the knowledge to stop it,” he added.
“We have a disadvantage – globalization, proximity, connectivity – but an advantage of better technology.”
The 1918 flu pandemic took just under two years, Tedros said. He said he hopes to complete this pandemic in “less than two years”.
Next came the H1N1 strain that killed tens of millions of people during the regular, seasonal mix of flu viruses.
“It took three waves to infect most of the susceptible individuals, and probably put them down in a seasonal pattern,” Drs. Mike Ryan, WHO Executive Director of Health Emergencies Program. “Very often,” a pandemic virus will regulate a seasonal pattern over time, he said.
“But this virus does not show a similar wave-like pattern,” Ryan said
Instead of passing waves that offer respite, coronavirus can be suppressed with strict measures, but rebounds quickly, Ryan said. “Obviously, if the disease is not under control, it jumps straight up,” he said.
But the flu of 1918 has passed and so will this pandemic, he said.
‘People are resisting. We are a fierce species and we will get through here, ”said Ryan.
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