History Doesn't Repeat, But It Does Rhyme

The world's largest flu pandemic occurred early in the 20th century.  The so called "Spanish Flu" caused an estimated 50 million deaths in 1918-1919.  The source of the virus that caused the 1918 pandemic hasn't been completely determined.  What is known is that it didn't originate in Spain.   In 2014, China emerged as a prime candidate as the originator, with the global transmission caused by the importation of Chinese laborers into the US and Europe in support of the war effort in the waning days of World War I.  This article compares what we know about that pandemic and our current Covid-19 outbreak.

On the face of it, the two pandemics have much in common. Both, it would seem, originated in what is termed a “zoonotic spillover,” which refers to the transmission or crossover of a virus from an animal reservoir to humans (influenza from aquatic birds and SARS-Cov2 probably originally from bats). Both were and are highly infectious, being spread through the air by coughing or sneezing (i.e., aerosol or droplet infection), or by touching infected surfaces. By these means, the Spanish flu and COVID-19 raced around the globe at the speed of the fastest transport system of the day (steamships and steam locomotives in 1918, and jet aircraft in 2020). Both produced symptoms like difficulty in breathing, fever, coughing and sneezing, while both could open a pathway to pneumonia and death.