Is the absence of decision by UK and NL to enforce social distanciation against Covid19 (unlike China, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, USA, etc) caused by memory loss of the positive effects of proactive enforcement of social distancing by US cities in the 1918 influenza pandemic? Death rates were reduced by 50%, source:
https://www.pnas.org/content/104/18/7582
In 1918 (deadly influenza) several US city mayors took bold decisions to place LIVES ahead of MARKETS and it worked.
Where is UK?
Not even where Donald Trump is
The US National Academies organises tomorrow 25 March a webinar on
COVID-19 Conversations
A free webinar series on the latest science and strategies from the NAM and the American Public Health Association
The Science of Social Distancing: Part 1 March 25, 2020 | 3 - 4:30pm ET
REGISTER HERE
https://mailchi.mp/nas/the-science-of-social-distancing-webinar-on-march-25?e=cb3f34a06d
They also have interesting resources here
https://www.nap.edu/collection/94/coronavirus-resources
1) Just to update: we're one week after first asking the question above. Now UK and India are in lockdown.
2) Let us hope for the best, that Non Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPI) help contain the Covid19 pandemic.
3) 1968-1969 flu:
In the meantime I have also found data on another pandemic which had not received so much media attention, although it had very significant impact: 20 000 deaths in Italy, up to 40 000 in France: the so-called Hong-Kong flu of 1968-1969.
It stroke brutally, but silently: the media did not speak much about it.
REF:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Hong-Kong-flu-of-1968
Case of Italy:
https://www.agi.it/salute/news/2020-03-03/influenza-spaziale-1968-italia-morti-7302702/
Case of France:
https://www.liberation.fr/debats/2020/03/22/1969-annee-epidemique_1782669
https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2018/04/19/la-grippe-a-engendre-une-surmortalite-estimee-a-13-000-morts-pendant-l-hiver-2017-2018_5287796_4355770.html
Now the input from the US National Academy of Medicine on social distancing: when to tigger it? how it works? What's the impact? Observed use in the past?
Find answers here
http://www.covid19conversations.org/webinars
Renaud Di Francesco your observations are correct and there are different approaches and the ones that are NOT using social distancing (US/UK/NL) and also Sweden are now counting infected and dying persons and are now (too late) alter their policies...
World leaders, look at New York! Learn now. It may be possible to save lifes...
Having said this how do you make social distancing work in India, Bangladesh or the Slums of South Africa and Brazil???
True: note that it's been late, but now UK is locked down too, and the PM in hospital, sorry to hear...
Then, in houses where people have no private space, fighting contamination is a challenge. This explains why the Northern suburb of Paris, a poorer district is having higher rates of contamination. Sad.
It's even more difficult in favelhas of Brazil, and in less well-off districts around the world
Today all 450 prisoners of a Chicago prison have been found to be SARS-CoV-2 positive...
A spark of hope at easter time: the numbers of recovered former COVID-19 persons is rising...
If we are not learning from history, we are making the same mistakes, which can cost a lot.
Thanks Carsten Weerth and Silvius Stanciu
LET ME ADD scientific articles I have recently written on simulating realistically the speed of Covid19 spread in contexts where the necessary measures are not taken or are delayed:
-case of large crowds and of households in lockdown:
Article Covid-19: Modelling propagation with Agent Based Models (ABM...
-case of elderly care homes, widely neglected:
Preprint Covid19-transmission-model-Elderly Care Home-etc-2020-04-28
Medical history is a badly studied subject, especially when it is related to the political profession and rhetorical sophistication.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
We are still a part of the natural world, despite all tech-know-logical laboratories.
A natural science of the human society is required, with respect to our future.
Stephen, I am not sure...
Medical history is AS good AS economic history or social history - real subjects, superb research...
But politicians and leaders rarely read or listen to historians (or experts if it comes to that)...
I am happy that A. Merkel is trained in Physics (Dr. rer. nat.) and U. v.d. Leyen is a trained medical doctor (Dr. med.).
So some leaders are smart enough to learn from experts...
Stephen I. Ternyik ,
I agree with you that one should study medical history more, although no two circumstances are the same and, more often than not, one cannot make useful parallels between infection outbreaks.
Reading this question reminds me of a university professor I once had. Amongst other things, he taught us that we live in the age of "civil rights." Nowadays, he said, everyone has the right to a lot of things, even to get sick against his/her own reasoning and better judgement.
But, he continued, in order to protect the innocent, it is physicians' and policy-makers' job to prevent that from happening againts some people's individual emancipation efforts.
Having said that, we also need a running economy. Why?
Saving lives costs a lot of money. Medicine does not operate outside the economy of the state.
During quarantine, the state is a double loser. For once, there are no adequate financial inflows through taxation. On top of that, the government uses already low finances (or borrows some, i.e. indebts itself) to cater for those who do not work, to prevent further sharp rise in unemployment, and to stimulate businesses in trouble.
Also, one cannot be protected health-wise, if one worries about physical survival (due to dwindling finances) and does not eat properly (because there are other urgent bills to pay first).
In the absence of viable medication to stop the spread of the outbreak, a working compromise must be struck to accommodate both medicine and the political economy.
:)
We have to keep in our mind that, this virus is novel, means there is NO effective vaccine or medication...
In other word, it is not a matter to be aware of 1918 influenza.
Here are two interviews on the spanish flu of 1918 and what can be learned out of it for the time after the first wave...
See https://www.dw.com/de/was-wir-von-der-spanischen-grippe-f%C3%BCr-die-zeit-nach-corona-lernen-k%C3%B6nnen/a-53216018
Permalink: https://p.dw.com/p/3bHus
Google translation of the above said DW contribution:
" Corona pandemic What we can learn from the Spanish flu for the time "after Corona"
What will a world look like "after Corona"? A book on the history of the Spanish flu and a German futurologist provide clues.
The first time I heard from my grandmother about the Spanish flu. Her mother, my great-grandmother, fell ill in 1918 when my grandmother was four years old. She survived, but retained severe heart disease. Nevertheless, she still had two children. She remained bedridden until her death, and my grandmother took care of her father and younger siblings for years. The Spanish flu shaped her life. Just like countless people around the world. Woman and approx. 3-year-old girl in 1917 (Image: DW / Spröer)
My family was only touched by the pandemic, that's why I can write this here. However, between 50 and 100 million people worldwide died in the three flu waves in 1918/1919, experts estimate.
How the Spanish flu changed the world
A comparison of the two diseases is, of course, limping: what was killing people at the time was not known (viruses as pathogens were only discovered in the 1930s). The genome of the new Sars-Cov-2 virus, on the other hand, was deciphered after a short time; intensive research is being carried out on specific medicines and vaccines. In medical terms, we are much further today than we were then.
And yet there are similarities: Just like back then, an illness plunges the global community into a profound crisis. Even if we are still at the very beginning of the Corona pandemic: What could we learn from the history of the Spanish flu for our future "after Corona"?
A book by the British science journalist Laura Spinney, published in 2018, provides information: "1918 - The world in fever. How the Spanish flu changed society".
When I read it two years ago, I could never have imagined in my life that I would soon be able to experience the classic measures to combat epidemics described there: ban on contacts and ban on events, border closures and quarantine regulations. Protective mask requirement.
Who's to blame? Fears fuel xenophobia
Even a few months ago, this seemed unreal to me - when we received the first news about fatalities in China. But even before the wave of infections spread to Europe, the virus exuded its poison: Under the hashtag #ichbinkeinvirus, Asian-looking people tweeted how they were racially insulted and hostile.
"Yellow peril"? Cover picture of the magazine "Der Spiegel" from 1.2.2020
And the news magazine "Spiegel" published a lurid and controversial cover picture at the beginning of February: "Corona virus: Made in China". The yellow lettering in the photo of a person in red protective clothing evokes associations with the derogatory term "yellow danger", which has been used repeatedly since the 19th century to stir up resentment against East Asian peoples, especially China.
The reverse is unfortunately the same now: from China, which according to its own information counts only a few cases of domestic infection, foreigners are now reporting on xenophobic experiences - now they are feared as potential virus carriers.
Read more on the topic: A meal without a corona virus, please
A Spanish, German or even Brazilian illness?
Even when the Spanish flu broke out, people's fears were expressed in blame. For example, in the names that gave contemporaries of the new disease: in Brazil it was called "German flu", in Senegal "Brazilian flu" and in Poland it was called "Bolshevik disease".
That was particularly unfair to the Spaniards: Because from there the "Spanish flu" certainly did not come, as Laura Spinney shows (but probably either from France, China or the USA). Soldiers suffering from the Spanish flu in a military hospital in the USA (Image: picture-alliance / National Museum of Health and Medicine)
US soldiers in an emergency hospital in Kansas in 1918
In Spain it was only written about them first. Because the country was neutral in the First World War, newspapers in May 1918 reported the outbreak of disease in Madrid without military censorship. Although the flu has been rife in the trenches of the warring parties in Belgium and France for weeks, the name "Spanish flu" stuck.
5000/5000
Zeichenbeschränkung: 5000
Corona crisis: when the "future changes direction"
Crises not only promote fear and resentment - they also bring positive impulses and creative solutions. The futurologist Matthias Horx sees us at a historical moment when the "future is changing direction". He illustrates how this future could look with a mind game: the re-gnosis. In contrast to the forecast, he looks back from the future into the now. He not only recognizes the obvious and noticeable push for modernization through the practical training of digital technologies, such as tele and video conferencing, internet teaching or mobile work (this text was also created in the home office). But also how our "human-social intelligence" will have helped to overcome the crisis. Trend and futurologist Matthias Horx (Image: dapd)
"Re-Gnose": futurologist Matthias Horx looks back at the present
The forced physical distance will have promoted a new closeness, he says. True: I am already communicating with colleagues, but also with old friends, via video chat or by telephone more intensively than before and before shopping we ask the older neighbors - of course with a safe distance above the garden fence - what we should bring with them.
Will this new, friendly coexistence remain? Because we were able to overcome the crisis together "despite radical restrictions in solidarity and constructively", as Horx "re-diagnosed"?
Pushes for modernization and new power relations
The global community can only master such massive crises together, in close international cooperation. This finding led to the establishment of the League of Nations Health Organization, a forerunner of the WHO after the Spanish flu. Many states also realized that they were responsible for public health care, and not just charities, churches, and private health care organizations as before.
Health systems worldwide will also be put to the test "according to Corona".
In addition, the experience of the flu also shifted social and political power relationships in many places. Mahatma Gandhi in India, 1925 (Image: Getty Images / Hulton Archive)
Mahatma Gandhi survived the Spanish flu in 1918 - and then became the leader of the Indian independence movement
For example in India. It was not the British colonial masters, but the Indian population that died massively. The injustices in medical care increased resistance, and Mahatma Gandhi, who himself had the flu, became the leader of the independence movement in 1919.
Huge crack in 1920s art
The consequences of the Spanish flu were also visible in art and culture. The painter Egon Schiele left one of the most shocking testimonies: his painting "The Family" shows him, his wife Edith and their child. A child who was never born. Because pregnant Edith died of the flu - just like the painter himself, three days later. He painted the picture in the meantime. Painting The family by Egon Schiele (Image: picturealliance / Fine Art Images / Heritage Images)
Trinity that never existed: Egon Schiele's painting "The Family"
After such traumatic experiences of war and illness, there was a rift in art in the 1920s, "as violent as the division of the Red Sea in the Bible," as Laura Spinney puts it. Just two examples: Arnold Schönberg's twelve-tone music created a completely new musical system, and architects parted from romantic Art Nouveau ornamentation and designed functional Bauhaus buildings.
Even today, artists deal intensively with the topic - and museums are already collecting photos and everyday objects in order to document the current historical state of emergency for later generations.
Covid-19 is also a zoonosis: a personal decision
We do not yet know how much the world will change "after Corona". Nevertheless, we can already help make them better. Anyway, I want to try that. Because there is another thing in common: Both diseases are zoonoses. In other words, diseases that are caused by viruses that are native to animals and that have somehow crossed the biological barrier to humans. Whereby they have mutated into deadly diseases. Face mask graffiti and woman with mask in Hong Kong (Image: Getty Images / AFP / A. Wallace)
Graffiti with face mask: Corona Street Art in Hong Kong
"By domesticating wild animals, have we actively brought animal reservoirs for the flu virus to us and even created new ones?" Laura Spinney quotes a scientific thesis in her book on Spanish flu. I think that's very likely. The Spanish flu and the new corona virus are far from the only examples. The HIV virus, the SARS virus from 2002 and the influenza virus from the so-called "swine flu" from 2009 also originally come from the animal kingdom. So what if we stopped eating animals?
I decided that for myself. Not only, but also because of Corona. Perhaps I am helping to sneak out the virus? That would be my very personal contribution to a world "after Corona"."
Stephen I. Ternyik
about the science of Medicine History as a real scholarly subject:
It may be due to the experiences of our mother countries and the traditions...
In Germany it is mostly done by medical faculties. Medical doctors have seen it as a fast track to medical doctor titles and it has been proven in some cases to be fraudulent to a very criminal extend (on professor was caught to have self written many phd-thesises on "medical history" of about 30 pages paper per Dr. med.-title at Würzburg University)... See Die Zeit, URL: https://www.zeit.de/2012/47/Professor-Medizingeschichte-Dissertation-Spenden/komplettansicht
The History of Medicine in the anglo-saxon world is a very creditable social science subject...
See the list of medical history societies and some journals issued by them:
https://www.rsm.ac.uk/rsm-sections/history-of-medicine-society/
The British Society of the History of Medicine, https://bshm.org.uk/
Society for the Social HIstory of Medcine and its Journal, see https://academic.oup.com/shm
American Association of the History of Medicine, https://www.histmed.org/
The Scottish Society of the History of Medicine, www.sshm.ac.uk and many more.
Initially many of them were little bit relaxed and it's actually beyond calculation.
Many thanks to all contributors. What emerges is that although the viruses of 1918 and 2019 are different, human behaviours in these two pandemics can be compared. Is it not notable that the portfolio of NPIs (non pharmaceutical interventions) is the same: handwash and reinforced hygiene, self-isolation, quarantine, lock-down, social distancing, gloves, face-masks?
100 years for not inventing better, and not learning from 1918 or from other countries (China/Wuhan) how to detect and implement early?
100 years to forget!
Yes, I think that is the case, but we find that states are floundering in decisions and politics are mixed with science. We have not distinguished the right from wrong.
I had always thought that you could study history to learn from it, not to repeat it again. But, apparently this is not so. The 1918 pandemic and the 2020 COVID-19 death and infections curves, with causes for the curves are almost identical. I think that I learned the lesson, and predicted what was going to happen, but the powers to be missed that day of class, apparently. July 17, 2020
☣☣ All researchers in this RG open question are invited to participate in the following question on the danger of bird flu in central Europe, following the COVID19 pandemic combined with the Russia-Ukraine War .. Your contribute is important in order to validate or not, the presented model-pattern.
Many thanks for the time >>
https://www.researchgate.net/post/COVID19_Russia_Ukraine_War_Pandemic_influenza_H1N1_or_similar_is_there_a_warning_pattern_in_central_Europe