Since 2020, one question has dominated the minds of people around the world: what will it take to finally end the COVID-19 pandemic? Some believe a fully vaccinated population and universal masking will do the trick, while others doubt COVID-19 will ever be defeated until an effective treatment is invented (Atlantic).
COVID-19 is unprecedented in its combination of delayed symptoms and ability to be transmitted. In the past century, no one disease has interfered with lives around the world to the extent COVID-19 has. “This is a distinct and very new situation,” says Sarah Cobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago (Scientific American).
“The methods used to end past pandemics can provide insight into the necessary steps that need to be taken to halt COVID-19.”
Still, many believe that past pandemics can help predict when and how COVID-19 will finally end. While COVID-19 is unique in several ways, the global community has overcome multiple other pandemics in the past 100 years. The methods used to end past pandemics can provide insight into the necessary steps that need to be taken to halt COVID-19.
Take, for instance, the Spanish influenza of 1918. One of the deadliest pandemics in history, the Spanish influenza infected around 500 million worldwide, killing an estimated 40 million. The flu heavily affected society at the time, particularly the economy. Similar to our situation now, there were no effective treatments or vaccines at the time to prevent the spread of the disease. The pandemic ended 2 years later — only after those that were infected either developed immunity or died (CDC).
Many speculate that the 1918 Spanish influenza was only fully eradicated after a second flu strain, H2N2, emerged in 1957. Essentially, scientists believe that “one flu virus kicked out another one”; however, it is still unknown how exactly this occurred. Similar attempts to address COVID-19 are impossible: Florian Krammer of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai explained that “nature can do it, we cannot” (CDC, Scientific American). This would involve scientists releasing an unknown flu strain into a world that is already losing in a battle to beat one.
The SARS epidemic was caused by a coronavirus, similar in COVID-19, and was not in the influenza family. From 2002 to 2003, there were less than 9,000 infected globally and around 800 deaths. The main way SARS was successfully controlled, with relatively low disruption to the global community, was containment. As opposed to COVID-19, SARS presents its symptoms quickly, and patients were not contagious until after the symptoms appeared, not before. Thus, doctors were able to promptly identify and isolate those that had been infected (Scientific American).
In 2009, a new influenza strain called “swine flu” emerged and caused global panic due to its similarities to the Spanish influenza. However, the swine flu caused minimal damage due to a vaccine that scientists developed less than 6 months after the virus appeared (Scientific American). While these flu vaccines are somewhat short term as patients have to receive them every year, it helped prevent a massive outbreak and made the swine flu akin to a seasonal flu (Nature).
As the race for a vaccine continues, a vaccine that has been deemed safe enough to be distributed to consumers has yet to be found (Atlantic). Bill Gates predicted that “the rich world” will receive a vaccine by the end of 2021, “and the world at large by the end of 2022” (Business Insider). However, even after a vaccine is introduced, it will take at least a year for it to stop transmission globally. Absent a vaccine or cure, our only hope at the moment is to develop natural immunity. As the former U.S. surgeon general under Obama warns, “life won’t return to some semblance of what it was like pre-pandemic” before 2022 (Fortune).
Hopefully, these past pandemics can provide guidance in efforts to secure global health and quicken our return to normality. While exactly when and how this pandemic will end are unclear, it appears that a combination of heavy containment and an effective vaccine is needed. The 2002 SARS epidemic and 2009 swine flu, in particular, have shown the importance of quick and, in some cases, extreme containment efforts, which many countries have been avoiding because of the economic implications. At the very least, we can do our best to avoid past mistakes, such as relaxing containment policies too early, which is what many cities in the United States did at the peak of the Spanish Influenza (History.com). The global community’s health and long-term economic well-being depend on it.
Sources:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/how-will-coronavirus-end/608719/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-covid-19-pandemic-could-end1/
https://fortune.com/2020/07/28/when-will-covid-end-coronavirus-pandemic-2022-vaccine/
https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-thinks-pandemic-could-over-at-the-end-of-2021-2020-8
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02278-5
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/1918-flu-pandemic
