Five years after Covid-19 activities are closed all over the world, medical historians are sometimes struggled to put the epidemic in the context.
What do they ask, should this continuous viral threat be compared?
Is Covid like influenza 1918, terrifying when she was raging but soon fell into a long nightmare?
Is it like polio, it was overcome, but in the wake of it, a group of affected people left it, but often unimaginable who suffer from long -term health consequences?
Or is it unique in the way it was born with a widespread rejection of public health advice and science itself, positions that some fear may come to chase the nation when the next main disease arises?
Some historians say that all of the above, which causes Covid to stand out in epidemics.
Historians say that historians are in many ways – Covid’s pandemic – announced by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020 – It reminds them of the influenza 1918. Both were terrifying, killing large proportions of the population, unlike, for example, polio or HIV, terrible such diseases.
The influenza was killed 1918 675,000 People are among the residents of the United States 103 millionOr 65 out of every 10,000. Kofid has been killed so far 1,135,000 Americans are among 331.5 million, or 34 out of every 10,000.
Both epidemics took control of the news every day while moving them. Both of them landed to the back of most people with a decrease in the number of infections and deaths.
C. Alexander Navarro, the medical historian at the University of Michigan, is that in the fall of 1918, when the nation was in the labor of a more bloody wave of influenza in 1918, “newspapers were full of stories responsible for influenza, details of daily cases, death, editing and recommendations issued by officials.”
During the next year, the virus declined. As well as the attention of the nation.
There was no memorial for influenza victims, and there are no annual days of remembering.
“The nation has simply moved,” said Dr. Navarro.
Historians say the same happened with Kovid, although it took longer to the harshest effects of the virus to retreat.
Most people live as if the threat has disappeared, with deaths a small part of what they were before.
In February 15th,, 273 The Americans died from Kovid. In the last week of 2021, 10,476 Americans died of Kovid.
Interest in the Covid vaccine also decreased. Dr. Navarro indicated that “only 23 percent of adults” had obtained the updated vaccine.
Covid remains – permanent financial effects, remain delayed in educational achievement, unofficial dress, enlargement meetings, and the desire to work from home. But a few of them think about Covid as they go in their daily lives.
An empty role, a medical historian at the University of Exeter, indicated that there was no widespread effort to commemorate long deaths. Instead, with Covid, “people disappeared in hospitals and have never been discharged.”
Now only their friends and families who remember.
Dr. Farga called this response understood. She said that people do not want to “be dragged” into the memories of those renewable years.
But some, like those who suffer from long long, cannot forget. In this sense, you see similarities with other epidemics that, unlike influenza in 1918, left a group of people who were always affected.
People who were paralyzed in the paralyzed in the 1950s described themselves to Dr. Farga as “dinosaurs”, reminding the time before the vaccine, when the virus was killing or paralyzing children.
She said that every pandemic has dinosaurs. They are the children of Zika who live with Microcatephaly. They are people, often on the margins of society, who develop aid. They are people who contract tuberculosis.
But despite the appeals of those who cannot forget Covid and who are looking for more research, more sympathy, and more attention, the most prevalent position is: “We no longer need attention anymore,” said Mary Vesel, historian of Johns Hopkins University.
“This is always left behind – damage or still in danger,” said Dr. Baron Lerner, historian of New York University Langon Health, in the public health world.
Dr. Lerner said: “It is painful,” that people be held aside. “Their life is changed. The attention you feel is required to reduce it.”
But he added, “On a realistic basis, there are any number of things to study.” He pointed out that the resources are limited, adding, “it can be logical to move forward.”
One aspect of the roaming epidemic is still with the nation, and it appears to be part of a new fact: it has changed positions significantly towards public health.
Kyle Harper, a historian of Oklahoma University, said he would give a vital medical response to Covid A-Plus. “The offering of the vaccines was incredible,” he said.
But he said, “I will give the social response C-MINUS.”
Dr. Lenerner was the same thought.
He said that a few medical experts expect a lot of resistance to measures such as masks, quarantine and social distant – when they became available – vaccines and vaccine delegations.
“In comparison with other epidemics, the amount of reaction to standard public health practices was great,” he said with Covid.
He said, “This distinguishes Covid.” Public health measures have worked in the past.
He said that some of the subscriptions were reasonable, such as objections to wearing masks in the open air. But the association of public health measures was widespread and distinguished.
Dr. Navaro agreed and said that the contrast with 1918 was amazing.
“In 1918, there was a constant respect for science and medicine that seems to be not present today,” he said. There were pockets of resistance to measures such as masking and avoiding large groups. But for the largest part, the people who complied with public health advice said. And compliance is absolute from politics.
Dr. Navarro said that World War I played a role in the correspondence, which may have strengthened the commitment.
Dr. Navarro said: “Public health orders and recommendations are often used as the same language that has been used to support support for the war effort.” For example, the authorities asked people to “cover their cough and sneeze so that their citizens were not measured because the Germans were imagining by the Germans.”
Dr. Lerner diverges Covid response to respond to the polio vaccine.
The polio vaccine underwent a preliminary test, then a wide -ranging test, in the 1950s, with wide public acceptance.
“Belief in the scientific process is lost.”
Dr. Harper said this does not preach good for the next epidemic.
“There will be another pandemic,” he said. “And if we have to fight it without public confidence, this is the worst possible response.”
