Corona Virus and Oshkosh?

[GrummanBear]

Genuinely curious, as I hadn’t heard of it until a week ago...but for those born in the 40’s and 50’s, do they remember mass panic during the Asian Flu? It also came from China, spread worldwide, and targeted the elderly (ca 1957-1958). My understanding is the number of Americans who died (116,000) would be the equivalent of approximately 222,000 today (as a % of the population). I’m assuming they didn’t cancel life as they knew it(?)

Makes me wonder if history will judge us less by the ferocity of the virus and more by the intensity of our fear.


“As an entirely new strain there was no immunity in the populace and the first vaccines were not distributed until August in the US and October in the UK, and then on an extremely limited basis.

One GP recalled ‘we were amazed at the extraordinary infectivity of the disease, overawed by the suddenness of its outset and surprised at the protean nature of its symptomatology.’”

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemic.html

 

[flyingron]

What happened in 1957 is that there was a microbiologist at Walter Read who was able to make parallels to the earlier Spanish Flu and pushed forward the materials needed to get a vaccine done in only four months. By nine months since its appearance in the US, a large number of people were vaccinated.

We're not so lucky now. Part of it was the systematic dismantling of our public health system. The fact we've not had a pandemic of either flu or polio or other of the dread diseases allowed us to become complacent. The second thing is that the 57 flu, H2N2 was significantly similar to the earlier flu (they found out that some of the elderly who'd survived Spanish flu were resistant to the new one), allowing the an easy extrapolation of one to the other. While, coronoa viruses have hit before, we don't have vaccines for them to work from. We never got one for MERS or SARS.

In fact, I've got a paper here from 2005 that says:

These events indicate that a SARS
epidemic may recur at any time in the future, either by the
virus escaping from laboratory samples or by SARS-CoV
isolates evolving from SARS-CoV–like virus in animal
hosts.
​

and goes on to say:

Therefore, development of effective and
safe vaccines is urgently needed to prevent a new SARS
epidemic and for biodefense preparedness.​

Not only was there known to be a threat of a future pandemic, specifically a new strain of the SARS-COV was identified over FIFTEEN years ago. While there's plenty of blame to go around with the recent response, the foundations for this have been across several administrations.

 

[GrummanBear]

What happened in 1957 is that there was a microbiologist at Walter Read who was able to make parallels to the earlier Spanish Flu and pushed forward the materials needed to get a vaccine done in only four months. By nine months since its appearance in the US, a large number of people were vaccinated.

We're not so lucky now. Part of it was the systematic dismantling of our public health system. The fact we've not had a pandemic of either flu or polio or other of the dread diseases allowed us to become complacent. The second thing is that the 57 flu, H2N2 was significantly similar to the earlier flu (they found out that some of the elderly who'd survived Spanish flu were resistant to the new one), allowing the an easy extrapolation of one to the other. While, coronoa viruses have hit before, we don't have vaccines for them to work from. We never got one for MERS or SARS.

In fact, I've got a paper here from 2005 that says:

These events indicate that a SARS
epidemic may recur at any time in the future, either by the
virus escaping from laboratory samples or by SARS-CoV
isolates evolving from SARS-CoV–like virus in animal
hosts.
​

and goes on to say:

Therefore, development of effective and
safe vaccines is urgently needed to prevent a new SARS
epidemic and for biodefense preparedness.​

Not only was there known to be a threat of a future pandemic, specifically a new strain of the SARS-COV was identified over FIFTEEN years ago.

It’s really fascinating, especially with its higher, or at least similar, mortality rate. I still haven’t found anything about shutdowns of society or social hysteria before a vaccine was developed for it, however. Even more interested in a comparison between loss of life from the economic crash of 1929 and resultant depression and the loss of life from the pandemic(s). Certainly worth an objective evaluation.

 

[Kevin Eggert]

It’s really fascinating, especially with its higher, or at least similar, mortality rate. I still haven’t found anything about shutdowns of society or social hysteria before a vaccine was developed for it, however. Even more interested in a comparison between loss of life from the economic crash of 1929 and resultant depression and the loss of life from the pandemic(s). Certainly worth an objective evaluation.

While not on the scale of today, the avoidance and shutting down of some public gatherings was prevalent during the early 50's prior to the Polio vaccine. Swimming pools were closed and people were urged to stay further apart in public places. There is definitely a level of hysteria involved with the actions being taken today and we will never know what would have happened had we not taken these steps. Some of that is attributeable tWhile it is a good thing that total deaths appear to be less than anticipated, we will neve know how many more, if any, would have died by treating this like any other infectious disease without dismantling our entire economy.