ABOUT CORONA - AND EARLIER PANDEMICS

In continuation of yesterday I want to tell more about the ongoing Corona pandemic – and also about earlier pandemics in history.

The situation according to figures from yesterday is as follows:

Europe:       Number of infected:  39.768   Number of deaths:   1.727  ( esp. in Italy )

Denmark:   Number of infected:  864         Number of deaths:   1

PS: TODAY's good news:  The Danish Red Cross has started a project to find volunteers, who will help people in isolation or who are ill with practical problems such as shopping, etc.  And about 6.000 people volunteered immediately.  Perhaps the Red Cross or other organisations are doing the same in other countries. A very good idea!

The WHO has given the Corona pandemic this name:  Covid-19.  It is an abbreviation of:  Corona Infection Desease 2019 ( because it started last year ).  A pandemics is a word-wide epidemic, while an epidemics is limited to one or more regions.  During the last 300 years the world has had 3 pandemics each century.  Since 1900 we have had 5 pandemics, incl. the present one.  They have almost all been different forms of flu.

We often talk about the Spanish flu – or the Spanish desease in the period 1918-21, where possibly as many as 100 million people died worldwide. There is uncertainty about where the flu started. Until now we believed that it came from the US with the American troops coming to Europe in early 1918 to fight in World War I. Others believe it started in the trenches during the war.  And recent research points at another possible origin: Northern China. Why?  Because the United Kingdom and France hired about 140.000 workers from northern China to work in the factories during the war. 

The Spanish flu came in three waves.  In the summers it seemed to be on a sort of stand-by.   And more interesting, it killed younger people between 20 and 40 years old. Hardly any over 40 died. Why?  Because the older generations had experienced earlier epidemies with flu and consequently had a stronger immune system. 

In Denmark about 15.000 people died from the Spanish flu.  Compared to other countries is was a rather small number.

Here is what I wrote earlier about the Spanish flu:

The Spanish desease was a flu pandemics, which happened in the years 1918-21 – right after World War I. So far it is believed that it arrived with the American troops in March 1918. It killed at least 50 million people – twice as many as the number of killed during the war. My own Danish aunt was one of them. She died from that flu when she was 25 years old. And why is it called the Spanish flu? Because Spain was neutral during the war and did not have the same severe censorship of its media as other countries. Therefore, the Spanish media were free to write about the desease and its spread in Spain, where also King Alfonso XIII became very ill. That is why people got the (false) impression that it came from Spain.

An additional aspect of the desease is that the scientific world for many years did not know what sort of flu it was. In the 1990ies an American doctor went to Svalbard / Spitzbergen – a Norwegian island very much north of mainland Norway – and found a well preserved corpse under the permafrost.  It was a victim of the Spanish flu.  He took samples from the corpse and brought them back to the US for examination.  So now we know exactly what is was. A very, very dangerous and contaminating virus – which is now hidden away, so that it has no chance of getting out in the open again.   It could be catastrophic.

One point more on this:   the climate change and the melting of the permafrost in many places may bring old dead bodies out in the open – and with them also dangerous vira.  This is another important aspect of the fight to save the climate.