Quotes About Pandemic

In ten days—ten days!—the epidemic had exploded from a few hundred civilian cases and one or two deaths a day to hundreds of thousands ill and hundreds of deaths each day.

In 2003 a new coronavirus that causes SARS, "severe acute respiratory syndrome," appeared in China and quickly spread around the world. Coronaviruses cause an estimated 15 to 30 percent of all colds and, like the influenza virus, infect epithelial cells. When the coronavirus that causes SARS does kill, it often kills through ARDS, although since the virus replicates much more slowly than influenza, death from ARDS can come several weeks after the first symptoms.)

All influenza viruses mutate constantly

In 1918, the world population was 1.8 billion, and the pandemic probably killed 50 to 100 million people, with the lowest credible modern estimate at 35 million. Today the world population is 7.6 billion. A comparable death toll today would range from roughly 150 to 425 million.

And a severe influenza pandemic would hit like a tsunami, inundating intensive-care units even as doctors and nurses fall ill themselves and generally pushing the health care system to the point of collapse and possibly beyond it. Hospitals, like every other industry, have gotten more efficient by cutting costs, which means virtually no excess capacity—on a per capita basis the United States has far fewer hospital beds than a few decades ago.

During the course of the epidemic, 47 percent of all deaths in the United States, nearly half of all those who died from all causes combined—from cancer, from heart disease, from stroke, from tuberculosis, from accidents, from suicide, from murder, and from all other causes—resulted from influenza and its complications.

During the course of the epidemic, 47 percent of all deaths in the United States, nearly half of all those who died from all causes combined—from cancer, from heart disease, from stroke, from tuberculosis, from accidents, from suicide, from murder, and from all other causes—resulted from influenza and its complications. And it killed enough to depress the average life expectancy in the United States by more than ten years.

Investigators today believe that in the United States the 1918–19 epidemic caused an excess death toll of about 675,000 people.

Yet even under a best case scenario, even with the new technologies, it will still take months to deliver large quantities of vaccine. In addition, much of the U.S. vaccine supply is manufactured outside the country; in a lethal pandemic, there is a question whether another government would allow its export before its own population was protected.

When the Washington Post asked Tom Frieden, then head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, what scared him the most, what kept him up at night, he replied, "The biggest concern is always for an influenza pandemic . . . [It] really is the worst-case scenario.

an epidemic so extreme that New York City had required people to obtain passes to travel.

NATURE CHOSE to rage in 1918, and it chose the form of the influenza virus in which to do

Today's world population is 6.3 billion. To give a sense of the impact in today's world of the 1918 pandemic, one has to adjust for population. If one uses the lowest estimate of deaths—the 21 million figure—that means a comparable figure today would be 73 million dead. The higher estimates translate into between 175 and 350 million dead.

Hospitals, like every other industry, have gotten more efficient by cutting costs, which means virtually no excess capacity—on a per capita basis the United States has far fewer hospital beds than a few decades ago. Indeed, during a routine influenza season, usage of respirators rises to nearly 100 percent; in a pandemic, most people who needed a mechanical respirator probably would not get one.

Seattle, like many other places, became a masked city. Red Cross volunteers made tens of thousands of masks. All police wore them. Soldiers marched through the city's downtown wearing them.

Influenza could not have been contained as SARS was—influenza is far more contagious.

Nature chose to rage in 1918, and it chose the form of the influenza virus in which to do it. This meant that nature first crept upon the world in familiar, almost comic, form. It came in masquerade. Then it pulled down its mask and showed its fleshleass bone.

In fact, the virus can remain infectious on a hard surface for days.)

San Antonio suffered one of the highest attack rates but lowest death rates in the country; the virus there infected 53.5 percent of the population, and 98 percent of all homes in the city had at least one person sick with influenza. But there the virus had mutated toward mildness; only 0.8 percent of those who got influenza died. (This death rate was still double that of normal influenza.)

So the problems presented by a pandemic are, obviously, immense. But the biggest problem lies in the relationship between governments and the truth.

In a truly lethal pandemic, state and local authorities could take much more aggressive steps, such as closing theaters, bars, and even banning sports events—in 1919 even the Stanley Cup finals were canceled—and church services.

Reassortment mixes some of the segments of the genes of one virus with some from the other. It is like shuffling two different decks of cards together, then making up a new deck with cards from each one. This creates an entirely new hybrid virus, which increases the chances of a virus jumping from one species to another.

The disease soon became known as "Spanish influenza" or "Spanish flu," very likely because only Spanish newspapers were publishing accounts of the spread of the disease that were picked up in other countries.

Influenza is an RNA virus. So are HIV and the coronavirus.