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Guest Essay
By John M. Barry
Barry, a researcher at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, is the author of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. “
In 1918, a flu virus jumped from birds to humans, killing between 50 and 100 million people in a world that has less than a quarter of today’s population. Dozens of mammals have also been infected.
We are now witnessing a new wave of avian influenza. For years, it has devastated bird populations around the world and, more recently, has begun to infect mammals, especially livestock, in a way never seen before. First, the virus has almost recently jumped from a cow to at least one human; Fortunately, this is a mild case.
While there is still much work to be done for this virus to cause another human pandemic, those events offer some other explanation for why, if necessary, governments and public health authorities should prepare for the next pandemic. they want to be wary of classes they might think Covid-19 has left behind. We will have to be in a position to fight the next war, not the last.
Two hypotheses based on our Covid experience would be particularly damaging and could cause enormous damage, even if policymakers realized their mistake and adapted quickly.
The first consideration considers those who have the highest probability of dying from a pandemic virus. Covid basically killed people 65 and older, but Covid is an anomaly. The previous five pandemics about which we have reliable knowledge have killed much younger populations.
The 1889 pandemic looks a lot like Covid (and according to some scientists is caused by a coronavirus). The young escaped intact and most of the elderly died, but it was the older 15 to 24 who suffered the greatest excess mortality. that is, deaths above normal. The flu has caused other pandemics, but unlike seasonal flu deaths, which usually kills older people, in the 1957, 1968 and 2009 epidemics, some or more of the deaths occurred in other minors. of 65. La catastrophic pandemic of 1918 was the complete opposite of Covid: more than 90 percent of excess mortality occurred among people under 65 years of age. Children under 10 years of age were the most vulnerable, followed by those over 25 to 29 years of age.
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