How is the ongoing COVID-19 a direct reflection of the 1918 flu pandemic?
With Covid-19 pandemic once again growing with the advent of the recent Omicron variant, historians and scientists are now looking back at the history of other pandemics. Research has revealed that most pandemics last for about two to four years and we are just about to enter the two-year phase in March 2022.
It has further come to the limelight that viruses that cause pandemics often mutate and become less threatening over time and eventually become an endemic, spreading at a much lower and controllable levels. In fact, this was exactly the case for the 1918s flu pandemic and its influenza strain, making virologists around the world hopeful that the mutation capability of SARS-Cov-2 virus responsible for Covid-19 pandemic will also weaken soon.
How did the 1918 flu pandemic eventually turn out?
Reports about Omicron suggest that although it is spreading at the speed of light, the infections so far have been mild to moderate. This is both the result of unique mutations and build-up of immunity all across the world. For this reason, Covid-19 is being compared to the 1918 flue pandemic. Here’s how it turned out.
The influenza strain that had emerged in 1918 causing the flu pandemic turned out to be less life threatening as soon as it had entered its 18th month. This too was a result of herd immunity alongside different and less severe mutations of the virus. Officially it ended somewhere around 1920 as by then more than half of the world had been exposed to the virus. However, modern day virologists claim that in reality, the 1918 influenza strain had never really disappeared. In fact, it kept on mutating and one or more of its variants still continue to exist today. In other words, it turned out to be something like the common cold.
How do pandemic causing viruses really behave?
According to virologists, biologically speaking, even though pandemic causing viruses kill in the beginning, their intention is never to remain fatal in the long run. Instead, they want to keep living by replicating and spreading without killing and moving from one host to another and keeping this process ongoing. This is how viruses end up becoming less virulent, in turn a minor health hazard.
Will COVID-19 end the same way as 1918 flu pandemic?
Over a period of three years or more, the 1918 flue pandemic had mutated so many times that it could no longer remain fatal. This is what scientists are hoping would happen with COVID-19 pandemic as well.
Moreover, it is no longer 1918, it’s 2022. Our access to global data, vaccines, therapies and other resources are far better which is why there’s hope to combat COVID-19.
However, the data regarding Covid-19 is constantly changing (rapidly too!) making it uncertain which way the pandemic is headed and whether or not annual booster doses or modified vaccines need to be produced in bulk proportion. The hope is that the pandemic might never fully go away, but people will surely develop natural or vaccine-induced immunity and battle the coronavirus sooner than anticipated.