I feel like it has been so long since the swine flu, bird flu, H1N1 flu, and other flu scares that we are due for one.
Like the recessions the flu scares are cyclical.
Like the recessions the flu scares are cyclical.
The same is not true in virology. There is no "pent up" mechanism that needs to periodically release an outbreak.
It is entirely random and in these types of outbreaks simply becomes more likely when many animal species exist in close proximity, allowing virus cross-over. It's no coincidence this happened in a live animal market.
One exception to cyclic nature is immunity. In cases where the same disease outbreaks because the human population is no longer immune - ie the Black Death which returned every couple generations in the old world. ...but that phenomenon only applies to SAME disease returning - not different ones.
A bit like the Y2K bug that was supposed to end the world but nothing happened but nothing happened because we took measures successfully. There are many people out there using this as an example of alarmist to draw parallels with the climate change concerns.
Maybe we as a species need to have people around who remember things and when they are gone we simply re-learn the lessons. Writing seems to be effective on passing the knowledge on how to do or avoid things but not very effective about the reasons.
Actually recessions seem to be driven by random events. Our brains impose a cyclic explanation on what is actually a stochastic process.
See https://www.philadelphiafed.org/-/media/research-and-data/pu... for more.
Current estimates are that it killed up to 100,000,000 million people, as many as the black plague.
We have much better medicine now, thankfully. But we also live in a much more deeply connected world with millions of people flying every single day.
Do we? Against a deadly and virulent flu virus causing viral pneumonia? Not really without development of a highly effective vaccine.
You have better life support, but that's about it. Something like ECMO is extremely invasive and limited to maybe a few per ICU.
Not sure if they'd actually work on these strains, but it's something.
Better supportive intensive care is exactly what lowers the case fatality rates for viral pneumonia. And this is very unlikely to become a hospital capacity problem.
How many people are dying today from preventable causes? Have you heard songs about them?
There have been many films, books, and other media about other epidemics. HIV/AIDS, bubonic plague, smallpox, and polio come to mind.
I think GP was pointing out how much WW1 overshadowed everything else that was going on at the time. In any other moment in history, the Spanish Flu would have been a significant occurrence.
Erm, it could be argued that the Spanish Flu is what stopped World War I.
That's pretty significant.
Spain was neutral, and therefore didn't have tons of people packed into barracks waiting to be deployed. As a result, they suffered the least. Relatively few Spaniards got sick. However, since they weren't at war, there was no wartime censorship, and it was covered by the Spanish press. Therefore the pandemic came to be known as the Spanish flu.
Extra credits did a series on it, which is worth checking out IMHO. Six episodes, ten minutes each. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhyKYa0YJ_5BZ3gQleTk-...
"The Spanish influenza epidemic, which took place during the winter of 1918–19, had a dramatic effect on the way heating engineers sized radiators," explains Dan Holohan, author of several books on steam heat and founder of HeatingHelp.com. "Central heating was relatively new then and the world had never seen anything as horrible as the Spanish flu, which caused an estimated 50 million deaths. Because the flu was airborne, the Board of Health started a campaign the following year that urged (more like demanded) people to keep their windows open so fresh air could enter the rooms."[1]
[1] https://www.citylab.com/life/2014/02/our-indispensible-guide...
So I guess that fell out of favor at some point when heating costs became a bigger issue.
Jesus Christ, that's more than 100,000 Earths! No wonder people were upset.
Joke aside, it was 50-100 million; the black plague was 100-200 million. Of course there was lot less people then.
I am hoping that this ends up being an overreaction. That said, SARS most definitely wasn't, and I wonder if we could make life a lot better if we generally treated the common cold and flu the same way, preventing the outbreaks in the first place.
If I had to guess, I'd guess it's probably around the level of SARS/MERS.
And at some point there will definitely be a major pandemic.
By absolute number of people affected it also has been trending down since around 1900 despite the population growth
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/first-fd...