The 2020 coronavirus and the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemics share many similarities, but also diverge on one key point.
“A big difference between the Spanish flu and COVID-19 is the age distribution of deaths,” according to Deutsche Bank DB,
“For COVID-19, the elderly have been overwhelmingly the most affected. For the 1918 Spanish flu, the young working-age population was also severely affected. In fact, the death rate from pneumonia and influenza that year among youth ages 25 to 34 in the United States was more than 50% higher than that of those ages 65 to 74. A remarkable difference for Covid-19 “.
Francis Yared, global head of rate research at Deutsche Bank, said the overall death rate measured by new weekly deaths and new weekly cases is about a third of the level seen in the second half of April.
“So we have an interesting situation right now, where the rapidly increasing cases in the United States are slowing reopens (negative) but the death rate is falling (positive). This may eventually give us more faith than now we are better off living with the virus, ”said the bank.
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There was no such great tradeoff between economic activity and public health during the 1918 Spanish Flu, because it was necessary to suppress the virus to allow consumers to be more confident and companies to function normally.
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During the 1918 flu, cities that implemented non-pharmaceutical interventions such as social distancing and school closings tended to have better economic outcomes in the medium term, Deutsche Bank added. “This provided historical support for the argument that there was not such a large tradeoff between economic activity and public health, because the virus needed to be removed to allow consumers to be more confident and companies to operate normally.”
About 500 million people, or a third of the world’s population, were infected with the 1918 Spanish flu. An estimated 50 million people died worldwide, with approximately 675,000 deaths occurring in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin,” the agency added.
During the 1918 flu pandemic, “Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years, 20-40 years old, and over 65 years old. High mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 age group, was a unique feature of this pandemic, “the CDC said. “Without a vaccine to protect against influenza infection and without antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infections, worldwide control efforts were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions.”
The disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, COVID-19, had infected nearly 11.6 million people worldwide and 2.9 million in the US as of Monday night, adding more than 156,000 cases. Confirmed Thursday night to Sunday night July 4 holidays, according to official figures compiled by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering. The disease had claimed at least 537,504 lives worldwide and 130,284 in the United States.
While COVID-19 progress has slowed in New York, where most cases in the US are still focused, confirmed cases of coronavirus have recently increased in nearly 40 US states.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, US Census Bureau, Haver Analytics, Deutsche Bank. Note: COVID-19 data uses provisional death counts as of June 27, 2020; The deaths of 1918 use the Death Register States.
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There are also some similarities between the flu and COVID-19, including its almost identical symptoms: fever, cough, night sweats, body aches, tiredness, and nausea and diarrhea in the most severe cases. Like all viruses, none is treatable with antibiotics. Both can be spread through respiratory drops by coughing and sneezing, but they come from two different families of viruses, and ongoing research to develop a universal influenza vaccine shows just how difficult both influenza viruses and coronaviruses can be. .
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“The second wave of the Spanish flu of 1918 was even more devastating than the first wave.”
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Historians believe that a more virulent strain of influenza struck for three hard months in 1918 and was spread by troops moving through Europe during World War I. “The second wave of the Spanish flu of 1918 was even more devastating than the first wave,” Ravina Kullar, an infectious disease expert at the Society for Infectious Diseases of America and an associate faculty member at the University of California at The Angels.
A mutated strain would be the worst case scenario for a second wave of SARS-CoV-2 this fall or winter.
Although the 1918 pandemic is forever associated with Spain, this H1N1 strain was previously discovered in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the US But it is similar to the Communist Party’s response to the first cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, World War I censorship buried or downplayed those reports. “It is essential to consider the deep connections between the Great War and the influenza pandemic not only as concurrent or consecutive crises, but more deeply intertwined,” wrote historian James Harris in an article on the pandemic.
Doctors and members of the public, from now on, were scared by how strong and healthy people fell victim to the 1918 flu. Today’s doctors attribute that to the “cytokine storm,” a process in which the system The immune system of healthy people reacts with such force that it damages the body. A hallmark of some viruses: a surge of immune cells and their activating compounds (cytokines) effectively turned the body against itself, causing inflammation of the lungs, severe respiratory distress, leaving the body vulnerable to secondary bacterial pneumonia.
The Dow Jones DJIA Industrial Index,
and the S&P 500 SPX,
It ended higher Monday, after better-than-expected unemployment figures last week amid a surge in coronaviruses in states that have relaxed restrictions.
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