H1N1
H1N1
Currently the world is battling the outbreak of COVID-19. Many people are comparing this pandemic to another virus that ravaged this planet, H1N1 aka The Spanish Flu. Some rare good news in the middle of this out break is the story of a 104 year old Spanish Flu survivor and WWII veteran that contracted and survived being infected with Coronavirus. Because of the symptoms, and speed in which COVID-19 is being spread its fair to draw comparisons but, Spanish Flu and COVID-19 are different diseases, however they do have certain things in common. They are both respiratory diseases. They both are spread by breath and hand contact as well as surface contact. Both are viruses, and both are highly contagious. Once again pay attention to the CDC and WHO, but according to them all signs are already pointing to that Coronavirus won’t come close to the numbers of the Spanish Flu. It is precisely because of the Spanish Flu though that things likely will not be as bad. The H1N1 pandemic of 1918 changed the way the world manages and provides healthcare. Its precisely because of what we learned about the spread of H1N1, that we are most likely better prepared and capable of defending ourselves against COVID-19.
The the H1N1 pandemic of 1918 is estimated to have killed at least 50 million people, or 3% of the world population at the time. It had three waves, but by far the most lethal was the second wave that occurred in late August. The majority of deaths happened between August and December of 1918. That many people hadn’t died due to a pandemic in a single year since The Black Death. Besides an extraordinary death toll it also infected five hundred million people, or nearly a third of the worlds population at the time. During the outbreak, doctors and physicians weren’t compelled or required to report cases so the definite death toll or infection rate, even for a disease that spread as recently as 1918 is still unknown. Some models have have put the number of deaths due the the Spanish Flu as high as one hundred million.
The Flu
It’s also very important to note that H1N1 for all intents and purposes is THE FLU, not a type of the flu. Etymologically speaking the world started referring to any illness of its type as “the flu” as a result the 1918 pandemic. This is not to say that the virus hasn’t been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years. In fact symptoms of the virus are described in texts as early as 2,400 years ago. The first verifiable evidence of the virus is seen in the year 1580, in Russia and that pandemic made its way through to Western Europe and Africa. It seems that Influenza related pandemics have only become very prevalent in the last two hundred or so years. In the last one hundred and forty years alone there have been five influenza related pandemics. Before the 1918 outbreak of H1N1, there was a pandemic in 1889 that reportedly killed one million people and infected three hundred million to nine hundred million people. I hate putting up numbers with such a variance but because record keeping and reporting was so bad up until the 1920’s, all of the numbers are based on estimates and models. The word Influenza is Italian for Influence, and it has certainly had an influence on the last two hundred years of medicine.
Healthcare
There were many things done to mitigate the spread of H1N1 in 1918. Quarantining, social distancing, sanitation methods were all implemented to prevent the spread of the virus. However as I said earlier, because doctors and hospitals were not compelled to report cases these methods were implemented too late. The virus had already begun to spread out of control and social distancing, sheltering in place, and quarantining were almost futile. As a direct result of the pandemic countries around the world began to centralize their healthcare and compelled or mandated their physicians to report cases of communicable diseases for the first time in history. Governments around the world began embracing the concept of socialized medicine. Russia was the first country to put in place a centralized public healthcare system. Germany, France, and the UK eventually followed their lead. The U.S. took a different approach, by implementing and subsiding employer based insurance. The point is, nations took steps to consolidate healthcare, and to expand access as direct result of the H1N1 outbreak.
Conclusion
Just to be clear there are multiple versions of the flu. There are four classifications A,B,C, and D and within each one of those classifications, are different subtypes of the virus. Each version of the flu has the potential to get out of control without intervention from governments and world health authorities. However there is only one that is classified as pandemic flu and only one that strikes fear in healthcare and government officials alike, thats Influenza type A, and at the top of the list is H1N1. There have been at the very least twelve H1N1 pandemics in the last hundred years. There is presently an H1N1 outbreak occurring in India. The last large scale pandemic that was caused by H1N1 was in 2009. The pandemic of 2009 infected around seven hundred million to over one billion people. However because of increased availability of testing, healthcare, medicines, treatments, antivirals, antibiotics, and centralized/world health organizations coordinating efforts to fight the pandemic the resulting death toll was only around two hundred and fifty thousand worldwide. To put that into perspective around two hundred thousand and five hundred thousand people a year die from seasonal flu. The bottom line is that we are more prepared and capable of combating pandemics and infectious diseases as result of the H1N1 pandemic in 1918. If it wasn’t for government providing healthcare or the means for people to get care, seasonal flu, and pandemics could easily get out of control. If people aren’t afraid to pay for medical intervention they are more likely to get help sooner and they won’t die as a result. Furthermore if they receive antivirals, vaccinations, and antibiotics they are less likely to spread infectious diseases.
