Coronavirus Is Very Different From the Spanish Flu of 1918. Here’s How.

The fear is similar, but the medical reality is not. It was a disease so awful that it terrified people for generations. The 1918 flu pandemic, thought to be the deadliest in human history, killed at least 50 million people worldwide (the equivalent of 200 million today), with half a million of those in the United States. It spread to every part of the world, affecting populations in Japan, Argentina, Germany and dozens of other countries.

Maybe most alarmingly, a majority of those killed by the disease were in the prime of life — often in their 20s, 30s and 40s — rather than older people weakened by other medical conditions. As the coronavirus spreads around the world and public anxieties spike, comparisons between today’s situation and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 are proliferating in journalistic outlets and on social media. While the fearful atmosphere — surgical masks, stockpiling of food and avoidance of public gatherings — and potential economic ramifications are like those of 1918, the medical reality is quite different. “Nurses often walked into scenes resembling those of the plague years of the fourteenth century,” wrote the historian Alfred W.

Crosby in “America’s Forgotten Pandemic. ” “One nurse found a husband dead in the same room where his wife lay with newly born twins. It had been twenty-four hours since the death and the births, and the wife had had no food but an apple which happened to lie within reach. ” In 1918, the world was a very different place, even without the disruptive influence of World War I.

Doctors knew viruses existed but had never seen one — there were no electron microscopes, and the genetic material of viruses had not yet been discovered. Today, however, researchers not only know how to isolate a virus but can find its genetic sequence, test antiviral drugs and develop a vaccine. Get an informed guide to the global outbreak with our daily coronavirus newsletter. In 1918, it was impossible to test people with mild symptoms so they could self-quarantine.

And it was nearly impossible to do contact tracing because the flu seemed to infect — and panic — entire cities and communities all at once. Moreover, there was little protective equipment for health care workers, and the supportive care with respirators that can be provided to people very ill with coronavirus did not exist. With a case fatality rate of at least 2. 5 percent, the 1918 flu was far more deadly than ordinary flu, and it was so infectious that it spread widely, which meant the number of deaths soared.