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"The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic presents an unprecedented health crisis to the entire world." "Unprecedented"? Have you heard of the 1918-19
by rossdavidh 6y ago
"The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic presents an unprecedented health crisis to the entire world."
"Unprecedented"?
Have you heard of the 1918-19 flupandemic? Or even the 1957 or 1968 influenza pandemics? I'm not saying they're exactly the same, but the last two are in the same range, and actually the first one was way worse.
"Unusual", sure. "Worst in half-a-century", maybe, although some might argue HIV did more damage (albeit over a longer time period). "Unprecedented" means, "Never before seen, done, or experienced; without precedent". While every pandemic is different in some way, this is not 'unprecedented'.
- michaelmior 6y agoUnfortunately this is also what the current administration in the US has been saying. That it would have been impossible to predict that pandemic and that no one could have seen it coming. Despite many warnings and the establishment of a pandemic response team because this was seen coming. (Of course, not specifically COVID-19 at the specific time it did, but there were plenty of warning signs.)
- simonh 6y agoI got sick of hearing "Nobody knew X..." Yes we did Donald. Yes we did.
- KptMarchewa 6y agoAny ideas why vaccines for 57 and 68 pandemics were available much quicker than now?
- nyokodo 6y agoProbably because we already had an influenza vaccine which was developed in the 1940s. We have never had an approved vaccine for a corona virus. Thankfully there has been a lot of work on SARS and new vaccine technology for Ebola and Zika etc that could be applied to SARS-CoV-2 so we didn’t have to start from nothing this time.
- rossdavidh 6y agoWere they? I haven't seen any history on that one way or the other [checks wikipedia]...oh, they were! My guess is that it was because we had an established infrastructure for making influenza vaccines in particular. Even then, the vaccine didn't appear in any quantity until almost the end of 1957, and the influenza was first seen in 1956.
- rswail 6y ago"unprecedented" in that it was rapidly distributed by modern travel before quarantine could be established and it spread across the EU, Asia, Oceania simultaneously.
- the8472 6y agoSeveral asian countries established quarantine just fine. And the spanish flu was globally distributed by troop movements during WW1. There even were anti-maskers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci... The spanish flu was even more severe since its lethality followed a W-shape instead of predominately affecting old people.
- im3w1l 6y agoI know my country, Sweden has a chance to create a quarantine, but chose not to. Because the medical leader was foolishly confident in contact tracing, which fell apart almost immediately.