Assuming that HCoV-OC43 caused the 1889 pandemic, it killed about 0.06% of the world population. By comparison COVID-19 has so far killed about 0.02% of the world population.
https://www.evms.edu/media/evms_public/departments/internal_...
Am not a doctor, just repeating what I read doctors saying.
On the other hand, the world population was way younger at that time, so Covid19 would have caused fewer sever cases back then.
Some countries (eg. norway, there way an article in our local news a few days ago) usually don't put elderly, very ill people on ventilators, if the chances of survival are minimum. Some do.
The problem with different treatments and procedures also cause different statistics and comparing between countries is almost impossible.
On the 1.8 million dead from Covid19, 500k came from Europe, which means around 750k were saved by ventilators there. It is already not “tiny” and I'm counting Europe only.
It may sound super cynical and all, but perhaps we've forgotten that natural conclusion to life is death
...but on average, they won't. It's way more than a pious "this exceptional case confirms an non-existing rule" thing. Let's get past the fear mongering.
Furthermore I have contracted it and guess what, I'm fine _now_ (sure we could argue about "long term effects" but at the moment that is big unknown). I'm also quite young so that played a part of course.
It's not dismissive to say everyone has to go sometime, it's just the truth.
If you're willing to sacrifice resources to give an extra few years to an already dying or sickly subject that's fair enough but pardon me if I beg to differ and look at the other side for the argument and focus on the repercussions for those that will not be _medically_ affected as much.
[0] https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1327 [1] https://ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid#case-fatalit...
Maybe 25’000 assuming two were saved for each one who died on it.
In that subgroup. A large part (I'd say a majority) of the people who died never used a ventilator.
True. But hold on: in my country (France), as of yesterday, 45 635 people have died in hospital (having access to a ventilator with few exceptions) and 19 780 outside (no ventilator). So in my country, the majority of covid19 victims had access to a ventilator. And given that a large part of the deaths took place in western countries, that subgroup is big.
« Pourquoi une grande majorité des morts du Covid-19 à l'hôpital ne sont jamais passés par la réanimation ? »
https://www.liberation.fr/checknews/2020/12/11/pourquoi-une-...
Edit: https://42info.fr/les-morts-a-lhopital-qui-ne-sont-pas-passe...
Taking that in account, out of the 45k who died in hospital, 12k died after being admitted in ICU. In the meantime, ICU saved 32k people (73%)[1], which is indeed far lower than my previous estimation, I stand corrected.
[1]: https://drees.solidarites-sante.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/dd67.pdf (page 17) which is the document quoted in your article.
Of course, back in 1889 there would be also multiple aspects that would lower the rate, if only the average density of populations.
We just don't know how much % of the population got that virus then so we can't really compare.
> The initial 1890 outbreak subsided after six weeks. However, the disease returned the next year and caused nearly twice as many deaths and also reappeared in 1892. The Registrar General calculated the death toll in 1890 as 27,000, in 1891 as 58,000 and in 1892 as 25,000.
> These second and third waves are worrying given that we are still in the first outbreak of Covid-19. Honigsbaum expresses caution, however. “The claim that the ‘Russian influenza’ pandemic could have been due to a coronavirus is intriguing, if speculative. Certainly, one of the pandemic’s key features was the way it attacked the nervous system, sparking remarkable cases of depression, psychosis and insomnia.” One notable victim was another prime minister, Lord Rosebery, who was laid up for six weeks in 1895 with a crippling fatigue.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/31/did-a-coronavi...
> There's no way to prove it now but I suspect the worldwide infection rate was quite high within a year.
Worldwide, that might be hard. But for Europe, there's archival material that helps paint a picture:
> Results: The spread of the pandemic was extremely rapid, with a starting point at St Petersburg (peak date = December 7. 1889). The UK and Scottish cities were hit only 6 weeks later. The mean speed of the front wave was approximately 300 Km/Week. The mean basic reproduction rate was 2.15 (range: 2.04–2.32). The mean peak value of the mortality curves was +105% above the base value (range 10%: Christiania to 221%: Brunn). The highest reproduction rates were observed at Stuttgart, St Petersburg, and Amsterdam.
https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(08)00369-X/ful...
They did. I can't quite find something about masks, but social distancing and quarantining: certainly.
> One major way of controlling Russian flu’s spread was self-quarantine. As with today, nineteenth-century doctors asked flu patients to keep themselves from society. “Every patient who is attacked by influenza ought certainly to keep within doors,” asserted one English physician.
And:
> Quarantine can be just as frightening as the disease itself, making it a target for humorous relief. One such cartoon from Funny Folks occurred early in the epidemic. The illustration depicts an aristocratic lady with influenza soliciting a dance from one of two healthy gentlemen standing in front of her. The lady continually sneezes as she tries to explain how she had not “probised Captaid Bodtgobery” the next “dadse,” and so she was free to “dadse” with someone else. This lady evokes the distress of British socialites as they tried to traverse society during Russian flu. The scene’s backdrop adds to this distress. Everyone stands around the ballroom with red noses, and many hold handkerchiefs near their faces in anticipation of the next sneeze, showing how these socialites chose class duties over convalescence and containment.
Even though "social distancing" wasn't used as a clear phrase. In 1889, the prevailing theories about the spread of disease revolved around "miasma's" in the air. The 1880's is the same timeframe in which a handful pioneers first discovered viruses as a distinct organism. It would take a few more decades before classic theories would be replaced by modern virology and bacteriology. The 1850-1880's was also the same time when people like Joseph Lister, Florence Nightingale and Franz Semelweiss would make the first strides towards introducing hygiene in hospitals which curbed mortality (even though this was often met with fierce opposition by the incumbent medical establishment at the time).
The entire article is a must-read really:
https://nursingclio.org/2020/03/24/joking-in-the-time-of-pan...