History does not repeat itself completely after Cavid

Five years after Covid-19 closed actions around the world, medical historians sometimes try to put a pandemic in context.

What are they asking, or should this viral threat be compared?

Is Covid like the influenza from 1918, terrifying when she was crazy, but soon fell into the status of a long nightmare?

Is it like polio, defeated, but leaving behind injured, but mainly an undetectable group of people suffering from long -term health consequences?

Is this unique in the common way to reject the advice and public health teachings, the attitude that some fear can bring a nation when another solemn illness appears?

Some historians say that all the above, which distinguishes Covid in the pandemia annals.

In many respects, historians say that Pandemia Covid – which the World Health Organization announced on March 11, 2020. – – It reminds them of the flu from 1918. Both were terrifying, killing a significant percentage of population, unlike, say, polio or ebola or HIV virus, terrible, like these diseases.

Grip from 1918 675,000 People from the US population 103 millionor 65 out of 10,000. Covid has killed so far 1135,000 Americans from the population 331.5 million, i.e. 34 out of 10,000.

Both pandems dominated in news every day while crazy. And both of them were inheritance to the mind of most people when the number of infections and death fell.

J. Alexander Navarro, a medical historian from the University of Michigan, said that in the autumn of 1918, when the nation was in the process of the most deadly influenza wave of 1918, “Gazeta were full of influenza stories, describing in detail, describing daily matters, deadly costs of death, editions and recommendations issued by officials.”

The following year, the virus went back. Just like the nation.

There were no monuments for influenza victims, there are no annual memory days.

“The nation just moved,” said Dr. Navarro.

Historians say that the same happened with Covid, although the strictest effects of the virus dealt with rejection.

Most people live as if the threat has disappeared, and death does not have a petite fraction of what they used to be.

In the week of February 15, 273 Americans died of Covid. In the last week of 2021, 10,476 Americans died of Covid.

Interest in the Covid vaccine has also dropped. Dr. Navarro noticed that now “a miserable 23 percent of adults” received an updated vaccine.

Covid remains – lasting financial effects, delays in educational achievements, free outfit, zoom meetings, willingness to work at home. But few think about Covid when they strive for their daily lives.

Dora Vargha, a medical historian from the University of Exeter, noticed that there was no constant universal effort to commemorate deaths from Covid. Instead, with Covid: “People disappeared in hospitals and never left.”

Now only their friends and families remember.

Dr. Vargha called this answer understandable. People, she said, they don’t want to be “pulled” into memories of these frames.

But some, like people suffering from long Covid, cannot forget. In this sense, he sees similarities with other pandems, which, unlike the influenza from 1918, left the swath of people who were permanently affected.

People who contracted paralytic polio in the 1950s described Dr. Vargh as “dinosaurs”, reminds us of the time of vaccine when the virus killed or paralyzing children.

She said that every pandemic has its own dinosaurs. They are children living with microghads. They are people, often in the margins of society who develop support. These are people who contract tuberculosis.

But despite the requests from those who cannot forget about Covid and who are looking for more research, greater empathy, more attention, the more ubiquitous attitude is: “We don’t have to care anymore,” said Mary Fissell, a historian from Johns Hopkins University.

It sounds so soulless, but Dr. Barron Lerner, historian Nyu Langone Health, in the public health world “There are always people who have been left – damaged or still threatened.”

“It’s painful” so that people are aside, said Dr. Lerner. “Their life is changed. The attention that you think that their situation commands is disregarded. “

He added, however: “There are many things to learn on a realistic principle.” He noticed that the resources are constrained, adding: “It could be reasonable to go further.”

One of the aspects of Covid’s pandemic is still with the nation and seems to be part of a recent reality: it has significantly changed their attitudes towards public health.

Kyle Harper, a historian from the University of Oklahoma, said that he would give a biomedical answer to Covid A-Plus. “The introduction of vaccines was amazing,” he said.

But he said, “I would give a social reaction C-Minus.”

Dr. Lerner had the same thought.

He said that few medical experts expected so much resistance to funds, such as masks, quarantine, social distance and – when they became available – vaccines and vaccine fines.

He said that with Covid, “compared to other pandems, the amount of standard public health practices was unusual.”

“It distinguishes Covid,” he said. Public health measures that operated in the past were rejected.

He said that part of the redemption was reasonable, like reservations about wearing masks outside. But rejection of public health was common and politicized.

Dr. Navarro agreed and said that the contrast of 1918 was striking.

“In 1918 there was a lasting respect for science and medicine, which seems to be missing,” he said. There were pockets of resistance to means such as masking and avoiding enormous groups. But mostly, he said, people warned public health advice. And compliance was divorced from politics.

Dr. Navarro said that also the World War played a role in news, which could strengthen their compliance.

“Orders and recommendations regarding public health often deliberately used the same language that was used to support war efforts,” said Dr. Navarro. For example, the authorities asked people “to cover coughing and sneezing so as not to jerk their fellow citizens, because the Germans are gassed by the Germans.”

Dr. Lerner compared Covid’s answer to a response to the polio vaccine.

Polio vaccine underwent preliminary tests, followed by widespread tests in the 1950s, with broad public acceptance.

With Covid, “Faith in the scientific process was lost,” said Dr. Lerner.

Dr. Harper said he didn’t bode well for the next Pandemia.

“There will be another pandemic,” he said. “And if we have to fight it without public trust, it’s the worst possible answer.”