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I am wondering why humanity was able to learn from two world wars to never have one again, but was not able to learn from past respiratory pandemics (e.g. Spani

I am wondering why humanity was able to learn from two world wars to never have one again, but was not able to learn from past respiratory pandemics (e.g. Spanish Flu) how to deal with and shape societies, how to educate people into infection prevention in order mitigate widespread.

erulabs 6y ago
If anything - I believe the most lasting lesson from the world wars was to avoid attempts to “shape societies” at almost all costs - for better or for worse.
- protoman3000 6y ago
  I disagree. We founded institutions like the United Nations, fostered global trade and integrated globally and internationally which shaped societies very much. But we were apparently not able to throughout educate people to minimize infectious potential. To me it seems like common spreaders of respiratory diseases are completely ignorant about infection and don't even consider that by their actions (and presence!) they might infect others.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - elcritch 6y ago
    Because generally speaking people enjoy living life and as a species that means socializing. Actions required to limit the spread of infectious airborne diseases are directly counter to that. Fostering global trade and free travel directly increase the spread of certain diseases but overall improve living standards. As a species our behavioral patterns have evolved to prioritize socialization & personal contact as more beneficial than disease risk, despite the impact of even more deadly diseases historically (e.g. black plague in Europe killed 1/10 people for hundreds of years in europe).
mixmastamyk 6y ago
That was a century ago. No one is alive with a clear memory and influence.
beamatronic 6y ago
Before all this, I thought that people WERE educated in such a way. I thought that no matter what, eventually people's sense of self-preservation would kick in. I believed that what they observed with their own eyes (sickness and death) would cause them to modify or alter their behavior, in order to avoid such an outcome. I was wrong on all counts!
- protoman3000 6y ago
  I share this sentiment, however >they observed with their own eyes (sickness and death) that's maybe not true with Covid-19. The perceived risk might be just too low in order to reach emergency protocols in many people. Apparently it's not enough to show trains filled with dead people in Italy. This assumes that people would act differently if the death was visible with their own eyes, e.g. with Ebola. But at this moment 2020 made me so pessimistic that I believe somebody here will post a study how even Ebola didn't bring up the change in people we would like to see. I don't know yet how to deal with the fact that apparently my whole view on the world and the nature of humans was wrong my whole life.
UncleEntity 6y ago
> I am wondering why humanity was able to learn from two world wars to never have one again... Nuclear bombs? It became too costly to engage in large-scale warfare after they were invented.
halfdan 6y ago
> I am wondering why humanity was able to learn from two world wars to never have one again I believe this premise is yet to be proven true. We've had no new world war yet.
onecommentman 6y ago
Global WWII deaths - 60M, many or most young Global COVID-19 deaths - 1.3M (November 2020), mostly old From the standpoint of QALY, there’s at least two orders of magnitude difference in the impact of the events. Include the fact that the world population has basically tripled since 1950, making the impact proportionally less, and we are in three order of magnitude territory. That’s probably part of it.
- protoman3000 6y ago
  > Global WWII deaths - 60M, many or most young > Global COVID-19 deaths - 1.3M (November 2020), mostly old I have issues with comparing things this way. We easily could have had higher magnitude of deaths but we chose to use preventive measures to not have that. Hence, it does not yield a conclusive comparison and deriving anything from that is void. The times of comparison are also not valid, as we are now just at the beginning of the 2nd or 3rd wave and compare that to the sum of all WWII related deaths at the end of WWII. This is the reason why people are cynical when they say the measures are too excessive because we wouldn't see enough deaths. The only reason we don't see excessive deaths is due to the measures.
m0llusk 6y ago
It depends on what you mean by learning. If you look at the literature it is clear that lockdowns and quarantines are no use against fast spreading infections which need population wide safety measures and tracking of clusters. The primary approach we have taken is a dramatic departure from established epidemiology. We did have a group focused on looking for and responding to epidemics, but it was disbanded by US leaders who find science uncompelling and inconvenient. Japan responded to CoV2-SARS by attempting to identify and focus on clusters and have had far greater success than the US, so your glib reference to "humanity" and "societies" probably needs finer detail to be completely accurate.
- protoman3000 6y ago
  I am not talking about lockdowns or quarantines, but I am talking about the disregard or ignorance a vast number of individuals show regarding their own infectiousness towards others. For example, it's unsettling to repeatedly hear about these super spreading events where individuals who know that there is something not right with their health, they do feel sick, they are coughing and show other symptoms, yet go into e.g. the elderly homes for visits or other places with many people and infect everybody. To me this seems to be a cultural issue that could have been educated out of people. Just as in Asian countries masks were a everyday sight before the pandemic but in western societies not, as they integrated it into everyday culture and we didn't. And I am also talking about other cultural issues, such as your mentioned refusal of science. We know from the past that measures regarding personal safety such as e.g. masking (or seat belts!) form loud counter-protest movements, see e.g. the Anti-Mask Leagues [1], which can undermine efforts to stop a pandemic. Yet, we did not work towards dealing with these cultural issues and anticipate or prevent the existence of these movements since the last pandemic. This leads to further impacts. I am wondering if there are any analyses about how the inability of governments and people to deal with the Spanish Flu impacted the susceptibility of people to fall for totalitarianism which eventually lead to WWII. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci...
  - djrogers 6y ago
    > it's unsettling to repeatedly hear about these super spreading events where individuals who know that there is something not right with their health, they do feel sick, they are coughing and show other symptoms, yet go into e.g. the elderly homes Err, what? You’re going to have to back that claim up with more than a Wikipedia link about a 100 year old event. I’ve not heard a single story like the one you appear to be claiming is commonplace...

erulabs 6y ago

If anything - I believe the most lasting lesson from the world wars was to avoid attempts to “shape societies” at almost all costs - for better or for worse.

protoman3000 6y ago
I disagree. We founded institutions like the United Nations, fostered global trade and integrated globally and internationally which shaped societies very much. But we were apparently not able to throughout educate people to minimize infectious potential. To me it seems like common spreaders of respiratory diseases are completely ignorant about infection and don't even consider that by their actions (and presence!) they might infect others.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- elcritch 6y ago
  Because generally speaking people enjoy living life and as a species that means socializing. Actions required to limit the spread of infectious airborne diseases are directly counter to that. Fostering global trade and free travel directly increase the spread of certain diseases but overall improve living standards. As a species our behavioral patterns have evolved to prioritize socialization & personal contact as more beneficial than disease risk, despite the impact of even more deadly diseases historically (e.g. black plague in Europe killed 1/10 people for hundreds of years in europe).

mixmastamyk 6y ago

That was a century ago. No one is alive with a clear memory and influence.

beamatronic 6y ago

Before all this, I thought that people WERE educated in such a way. I thought that no matter what, eventually people's sense of self-preservation would kick in. I believed that what they observed with their own eyes (sickness and death) would cause them to modify or alter their behavior, in order to avoid such an outcome. I was wrong on all counts!

protoman3000 6y ago
I share this sentiment, however >they observed with their own eyes (sickness and death) that's maybe not true with Covid-19. The perceived risk might be just too low in order to reach emergency protocols in many people. Apparently it's not enough to show trains filled with dead people in Italy. This assumes that people would act differently if the death was visible with their own eyes, e.g. with Ebola. But at this moment 2020 made me so pessimistic that I believe somebody here will post a study how even Ebola didn't bring up the change in people we would like to see. I don't know yet how to deal with the fact that apparently my whole view on the world and the nature of humans was wrong my whole life.

UncleEntity 6y ago

> I am wondering why humanity was able to learn from two world wars to never have one again... Nuclear bombs? It became too costly to engage in large-scale warfare after they were invented.

halfdan 6y ago

> I am wondering why humanity was able to learn from two world wars to never have one again I believe this premise is yet to be proven true. We've had no new world war yet.

onecommentman 6y ago

Global WWII deaths - 60M, many or most young Global COVID-19 deaths - 1.3M (November 2020), mostly old From the standpoint of QALY, there’s at least two orders of magnitude difference in the impact of the events. Include the fact that the world population has basically tripled since 1950, making the impact proportionally less, and we are in three order of magnitude territory. That’s probably part of it.

protoman3000 6y ago
> Global WWII deaths - 60M, many or most young > Global COVID-19 deaths - 1.3M (November 2020), mostly old I have issues with comparing things this way. We easily could have had higher magnitude of deaths but we chose to use preventive measures to not have that. Hence, it does not yield a conclusive comparison and deriving anything from that is void. The times of comparison are also not valid, as we are now just at the beginning of the 2nd or 3rd wave and compare that to the sum of all WWII related deaths at the end of WWII. This is the reason why people are cynical when they say the measures are too excessive because we wouldn't see enough deaths. The only reason we don't see excessive deaths is due to the measures.

m0llusk 6y ago

It depends on what you mean by learning. If you look at the literature it is clear that lockdowns and quarantines are no use against fast spreading infections which need population wide safety measures and tracking of clusters. The primary approach we have taken is a dramatic departure from established epidemiology. We did have a group focused on looking for and responding to epidemics, but it was disbanded by US leaders who find science uncompelling and inconvenient. Japan responded to CoV2-SARS by attempting to identify and focus on clusters and have had far greater success than the US, so your glib reference to "humanity" and "societies" probably needs finer detail to be completely accurate.

protoman3000 6y ago
I am not talking about lockdowns or quarantines, but I am talking about the disregard or ignorance a vast number of individuals show regarding their own infectiousness towards others. For example, it's unsettling to repeatedly hear about these super spreading events where individuals who know that there is something not right with their health, they do feel sick, they are coughing and show other symptoms, yet go into e.g. the elderly homes for visits or other places with many people and infect everybody. To me this seems to be a cultural issue that could have been educated out of people. Just as in Asian countries masks were a everyday sight before the pandemic but in western societies not, as they integrated it into everyday culture and we didn't. And I am also talking about other cultural issues, such as your mentioned refusal of science. We know from the past that measures regarding personal safety such as e.g. masking (or seat belts!) form loud counter-protest movements, see e.g. the Anti-Mask Leagues [1], which can undermine efforts to stop a pandemic. Yet, we did not work towards dealing with these cultural issues and anticipate or prevent the existence of these movements since the last pandemic. This leads to further impacts. I am wondering if there are any analyses about how the inability of governments and people to deal with the Spanish Flu impacted the susceptibility of people to fall for totalitarianism which eventually lead to WWII. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mask_League_of_San_Franci...
- djrogers 6y ago
  > it's unsettling to repeatedly hear about these super spreading events where individuals who know that there is something not right with their health, they do feel sick, they are coughing and show other symptoms, yet go into e.g. the elderly homes Err, what? You’re going to have to back that claim up with more than a Wikipedia link about a 100 year old event. I’ve not heard a single story like the one you appear to be claiming is commonplace...