15 ms·
Patriarch of Pandemics
- projektfu 7y agoIf so, then over the next 100 years it has killed many more than 40M.
- monadic2 7y agoWhat tense are you using?
- Supermancho 7y agoOver the next hundred years, meaning from 1918 to 2018, since there is an implied starting date from the subject matter. English is a high context language.
- mirimir 7y agoI think that "the following hundred years" would be clearer.
- baddox 7y agoI also like “subsequent.”
- kqr 7y agoAren't "next", "subsequent" and "following" nearly synonyms?
- InitialLastName 7y agoyep, nearly synonyms, which is why reasonable people who are native English speakers are able to disagree about which is best-suited to fit this sentence.
- irishcoffee 7y agoI think reasonable people understood the sentence.
- mirimir 7y agoTrue. I did, and was being ironically pedantic.
- baddox 7y agoYes.
- abiogenesis 7y agoThe World Health Organization estimates that worldwide, annual influenza epidemics result in about 250,000 to 500,000 deaths.
- pibefision 7y agoYes, but it is not contagious as covid19 is.
- easytiger 7y agoThat's not true. The problem is that a subset of persons require ventilation to survive more so than flu
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoWhy Covid-19 is worse than the flu, in one chart https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/18/21184992/coronavirus-covid-19-flu-comparison-chart https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/18/21184992/co... on edit: furthermore https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/keyfacts.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/keyfacts.htm says the range of people catching the flu per season is 3% and 11% whereas the estimates for catching Covid-19 are generally around 40-70%
- empath75 7y agothe second number will decline after everyone catches it, obviously.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agowhat is the second number you refer to?
- abiogenesis 7y agoI believe they meant the "40-70%" figure.
- mikorym 7y ago> The 1918 pandemic, deadly as it was, is still around today in the form of a mutated seasonal flu. Following global exposure and culling of the most vulnerable populations - middle aged adults that were most affected by the negative effects of the war - the lethality of the virus is significantly less. OK, but was there some kind of seasonal flu before that? That is the real question to me.
- th0ma5 7y agoYes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_influenza https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_influenza
- huffmsa 7y agoYes, but this just became the big dog. Like how there were other hominids before us, but now it's just us.
- mikorym 7y agoCan we infer from this that flu prior to 1918 was less severe on average? Or is the result not that strong?
- huffmsa 7y agoThey likely followed the same pattern. Severe initial outbreak when a new super strain appeared, then a gradual decline in severity as immunity developed and the strain continued to evolve. Rinse and repeat. 1918 was the first time that a flu benefited from modern transportation speed and the massive movement of humanity to and from Europe because of the war. So in the past an equally deadly flu would inadvertently be contained simply because infected carriers couldn't move to new, uninfected areas before they were dead or and beaten the virus.
- qqqqquinnnnn 7y agoso there definitely were other flus, this just happened to be a reassorted strain (evidenced by the swine and avian roots) that caused a greater immune response
- dmos62 7y agoIt's fantastic to me that pandemics were possible many centuries ago, though maybe the definition applied is different than to a current outbreak. > The outbreak of influenza reported in 1173 is not considered to be a pandemic, and other reports to 1500 generally lack reliability. The outbreak of 1510 is probably a pandemic reported with spreading from Africa to engulf Europe. The outbreak of 1557 is possibly a pandemic. The first influenza pandemic agreed by all authors occurs in 1580.
- pjc50 7y agoThe plagues were even more deadly. And very global. And, er, came from China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death
- leetcrew 7y agopeople have been trading for a long time. the modern point-to-point connections didn't exist, obviously, but east asia and western europe have been indirectly connected through trade routes since ancient times [0]. as long as the disease wasn't virulent enough to kill most hosts in a single leg of transit, it could be spread across all of asia and europe. the world-wide spread would be slower, but intra-community spread would probably be even faster due to the lower standards of sanitation and medical understanding. a truly global pandemic probably wouldn't have been possible with the lack of connectivity between eurasia and the americas. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road
- qqqqquinnnnn 7y agoAs soon as there was global trade, pandemics could spread. Colonist arrival to the americas was a semi-pandemic - but there were epidemics of the plague, of cholera, that spread from Asia to Europe and back for many years. there's an article on pandemics in antiquity: https://demystifyingscience.com/blog/2020/2/27/whats-in-a-pandemic-part-1 https://demystifyingscience.com/blog/2020/2/27/whats-in-a-pa...
- rntksi 7y agoFollowing links gets you to this article which tries to explain that the Neolithic decline happened also because of a plague. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_decline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_decline
- ekianjo 7y ago> The Great War destroyed the stability of a generation, and took 20 million lives That's an understatement. Rather two or three generations, since the Second World War is pretty much a direct consequence of how the First one ended.
- empath75 7y agoThe middle east is still a clusterfuck because of WWI.
- qqqqquinnnnn 7y agoThat's fair, I do my best to avoid making broad statements that would then send me down the rabbit food of citation finding.
- lawrenceyan 7y agoDo babies inherit the developed immune systems of their parents? If not, how do the gained resistances from survivors pass on to the next generation?
- toss1 7y agoI've read that breastfeeding helps transmit some key factors to help build the child's immune system, but I don't remember the details and would like to see an answer from an expert in the area
- hcknwscommenter 7y agoBreastfeeding largely does two things: i) it transmits antibodies from mom to child, the maternal antibodies circulate for a while and so the mom's immune protection is temporarily conferred; ii) it contains potential antigens like peanuts, cow milk, basically anything the mom eats and so it tolerizes the infant's own immune system from common food antigens. There are leukocytes, neutrophils etc. in breast milk, but it is unlikely that they get through the gut lining into the infant.
- joshmarlow 7y agoI believe there is some heritability. What's more, long term human couples tend to have dissimilar immune systems [0], allowing their offspring to have a more diverse spread of immunities. The fact that humans are somehow able to _detect_ properties of a potential partner's immune system is super interesting to think about. [0] - https://www.amazon.com/Social-Animal-Sources-Character-Achievement/dp/0812979370 https://www.amazon.com/Social-Animal-Sources-Character-Achie...
- wahern 7y agoWikipedia links for disassortative immunological mating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_histocompatibility_complex_and_sexual_selection#In_humans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_histocompatibility_compl... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_matchmaking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_matchmaking
- devmunchies 7y agoVery interesting how in a matter of days, the Spanish flu has been renamed to the 1918 flu. Cancel culture writ large. It’s actually impressive.
- i_haz_rabies 7y agoThe "Spanish" part has always been a misnomer, since it likely began in the United States.
- devmunchies 7y agoYeah I don’t care why. Theres a lot of things that are misnamed. I was just commenting on the power of the internet and outrage culture. I don’t use social media outside HN so I don’t feel the same sense of injustice.
- Frondo 7y agoIt's never a bad thing to use more accurate terminology, or to update language as society and culture develop. If my grandmother can learn a better word for "brazil nuts," you can learn a better name for the 1918 flu that started in Kansas.
- devmunchies 7y agoThis has nothing to do with accurate terminology. It’s 100% political.
- qqqqquinnnnn 7y agowhat's political, not calling an epidemic that was carried by migrant workers and Frontline soldiers into Fort Funston Kansas thé "Spanish Flu?"
- devmunchies 7y agoin the 90s i would imagine seeing a "Fun Fact" on the back of a cereal box saying "Did you know the Spanish flu actually started in Kansas?". And me going, "huh, mildly interesting" These days people choose weird things to focus on. To the point where they will correct you if you say Spanish Flu like its offensive. There's is definitely an effort to remove any instance of "The <country name> <disease name>". Regardless of accuracy. Renaming something isn't inherently political, but the choice of which misnamed things to rename is political.