Thread by @jsmian

This year started with optimism COVID-19 won’t be around for much longer thanks to speedy vaccine development.

The history of pandemics teaches us to expect otherwise. 👇🏼

stray-reflections.com/article/175/Th…

1) The Black Death pandemic struck in 1346, ravaging the world through the early 1350s, causing as many as 200 million deaths.

2) Many countries suffered recurring outbreaks every decade or so until the eighteenth century.

Scientists are still left wondering how the deadly pandemic subsided.

3) The 1890 Russian flu, with a coronavirus as the culprit, killed 1 million people globally.

Yearly outbreaks continued through 1895 until the population acquired partial immunity.

It’s still with us today, mostly causing a common cold.

4) The 1918 Spanish flu infected 500 million people, roughly one-third of the world’s population, and killed some 50 million.

5) That global pandemic lasted for two years until natural infections conferred immunity on those who recovered. 

A particular strain of the offending H1N1 virus became endemic, circulating for another forty years.

6) It took another pandemic, the Asian flu outbreak in 1957, to extinguish most of the 1918 strain.

The H2N2 influenza virus killed more than one million people and, through a series of mutations, continued to be transmitted until 1967.

7) The virus eventually morphed into a new influenza A subtype, H3N2, which gave rise to the 1968 flu pandemic.

Vaccines limited the spread, although an estimated one million to four million people lost their lives. Descendants of the H3N2 still circulate as a seasonal flu.

8) Whether bacterial, viral or parasitic, virtually every disease pathogen that has affected people over the centuries is still with us, because it is nearly impossible to fully eradicate them.

9) New variants can evade immune responses triggered by vaccines and previous infection.

Nature is still the best engineer.

10) From what we know, pandemics only end when herd immunity is achieved through natural infection or vaccination.

11) Oxfam has warned that 61 percent of the global population will not have a vaccine until at least 2022.

12) Rich countries representing merely 13 percent of the world’s population have reserved more than half the supply of leading vaccines.

13) China may never come close to achieving mass immunization against COVID-19.

Seasonal uptake of flu vaccines is below 3 percent, compared to 60 to 70 percent for advanced economies.

14) Trust in immunization programs is low. In 2018, when unqualified DTP vaccines were given to children, public dissent was nationwide.

For Beijing, social order is paramount.

15) Before China and the rest of the world reaches significant global immunity, we will live through a dismaying cycle as infections subside and surge—for years.

16) Most of the world remains susceptible to COVID-19.

We have not yet touched the high-water mark.

17) Of the seven known human coronaviruses, four circulate widely and cause up to a third of common colds and, on rare occasions, pneumonia and even death.

18) Covid-19 is likely the fifth endemic coronavirus—meaning slow, sustained transmission will persist, becoming less deadly as time goes on.

19) The pandemic won’t end this year or next year.

Even if the pandemic is curbed in one part of the world, it will likely continue in other places.

20) If immunity last less than a year, a span in line with other human coronaviruses, there could be annual surges in infections until more people develop immunity through exposure and vaccination.

21) Precautions like mandating masks, imposing quarantines, working remotely, and restricting travel are going to continue longer than is widely perceived.

22) As long as the virus persists somewhere in the world, the threat of new local outbreaks, and a return to lockdown, will remain.

23) The pandemic will last long enough to change capitalism and free enterprise.

Governments will prioritize human outcomes over budget outcomes and revise the social contract.

24) In the 1947 novel The Plague, Albert Camus writes, “But what does it mean, the plague? It’s life, that’s all.” 

stray-reflections.com/article/175/Th…