Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recently suggested that the COVID-19 outbreak has the potential to approach the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic in terms of severity, while expressing hope that that the interventions of the administration avoid such result.
Fauci made the comment during the Georgetown University Global Health Initiative webinar on Tuesday, during which he called the COVID-19 outbreak a “pandemic of historic proportions.”
“The numbers are quite sobering. We have had more than 135.00 deaths in this pandemic for the United States. We have more than 3 million cases. If you look globally, there are about 600,000 deaths and around 13-14 million infections. So this is a pandemic of historical proportions, we cannot deny that fact, “Fauci said.
“It is something that, when history remembers, will be comparable to what we saw in 1918,” he added, referring to the influenza pandemic that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) calls “the most serious pandemic in recent years history. ” It is estimated that around 500 million, or about a third of the world population at the time, were infected with the disease, which was caused by the H1N1 virus of avian origin.
Two men wearing and defending the use of flu masks in Paris during the 1918 flu epidemic that followed the First World War on March 1, 1919. (News Agency / Getty Images)“Right now, if you look at the magnitude of the 1918 pandemic where 50 to 75 million people worldwide died, I mean that she was the mother of all pandemics and truly historic,” Fauci continued.
“I hope we don’t even address that with this, but you have the chance to … address it seriously,” Fauci compared the two outbreaks, adding, “Although I hope the type of interventions that ‘is going to be and is being implemented is not would allow that to happen. “
Fauci also noted two similarities between the 1918 pandemic and the COVID-19 outbreak: both were caused by new viruses that made humans jump from animals, and then spread easily from person to person.
“It had two characteristics that make it the perfect storm,” Fauci said of the 1918 outbreak. “That is a virus that jumps species, but almost immediately has an extraordinarily capable and efficient way of spreading from human to human, to at the same time that it has a considerable degree of mortality. “
“It is not serious for some people,” Fauci said of COVID-19, adding, “but it is serious for other people.”
According to the CDC, of the 121,374 deaths reported so far to the National Center for Health Statistics involving COVID-19 in the United States, about 97,000 have been among people 65 and older. People aged 85 and over accounted for 40,125 of COVID-19 deaths, while those under 35 accounted for just 1,032 deaths.
Fauci said that while symptomatic infection rates among youth are lower, he urged them to wear masks to protect the most vulnerable populations because even if youth have a lower risk of getting sick, they can still transmit the deadly virus to others.
“What they need to understand is that, given the nature of the outbreak, even if you get infected and have no symptoms and never get sick, you are inadvertently spreading the pandemic,” Fauci said of young people who are healthy and “no.” Don’t worry about drinking my margarita in a crowd.
“You may not mind because you probably won’t have any symptoms, but you are likely to infect someone who will then infect someone who will be a vulnerable person who can get sick, hospitalized, or even die.”
“He is not only spreading the outbreak, but he is putting other people at risk,” Fauci said, urging young people to think about their “social responsibility” and take precautions such as wearing masks.
“You don’t care if you get infected or not it’s not a good way to control the outbreak,” he said.
“I am not blaming anyone. I think people do this innocently. They don’t pretend to be part of the problem but, without realizing it, they are part of the problem, ”he said.
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