On March 13th, 2020 the email went out that school would be temporarily closed for the next two weeks. Those two weeks quickly turned into the rest of the year as the world shut down. The virus responsible for the lockdown, COVID-19, is a respiratory disease with a range of symptoms. COVID-19 is transferred by the breath of an infected person resulting in symptoms such as headache, fatigue, fever, loss of taste or smell, shortness of breath, etc. While this is the most recent pandemic of the day, it’s not the only one in history.
Merriam-Webster defines a pandemic as “an outbreak of a disease that occurs over a wide geographic area and typically affects a significant proportion of the population”. As of recent history one of the closest things to the current situation is the Spanish Flu.
Lasting from 1918 to 1919, the Spanish Flu, also called the Purple Death or the Spanish Lady, devastated the world’s population. Of the 1.8 billion people around the globe, 500 million were infected and somewhere between 50 to 100 million died. Whilst WWI ravaged Europe, information coming in and out of warring countries was filtered. Neutral countries didn’t participate in the media censorship, Spain being one of them. Due to that fact all information about this new disease came from Spain, earning it the name the Spanish Flu. In early March of 1918 the first case in the U.S. was reported at Fort Riley, Kansas. Some believe the disease could have actually originated in the United States. Around a hundred plus soldiers became sick.
The first wave of the flu was relatively mild. The second in fall of 1918 had the death toll dramatically increasing. A person could die anytime between a few hours to days once infected. The second wave saw symptoms such as blue skin and the lung filling with fluid, compared to the typical flu systems.
WWI heightened the spread, killing more U.S. soldiers than the actual war itself. Between 550,000 and 675,000 Americans died. Forty percent of the Navy and thirty six percent of the Army had been infected.
Similar to today’s times, masks and social distancing were put in place while medical professionals tried to combat the disease.
The past five years has seen news of Covid circle through media outlets like a revolving door. Every few months a new vaccine, variant, or controversy makes headlines. Likewise Ebola has been making rounds in newsrooms since the seventies. In 1976 both Sudan and what is the modern day Democratic Republic of Congo collectively had over 600 cases. Both countries suffered death rates over 50%. Outbreaks continue to pop up since the initial two in 1976. While the majority of these reported cases come from parts of Africa, the United States, Philippines, Italy, Russia, and the United Kingdom had less severe cases.
Any widespread illness is scary and will come with many misconceptions. A prime example is the AIDS epidemic. While classified as an epidemic, the AIDS crisis was a global issue and shared many characteristics of a pandemic. HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) and AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) are a type of STD.
In 1959 the first confirmed death caused by HIV was documented in Congo. By December 12, 1977 a Danish physician named Grethe Rask died of HIV. In April of 1980, Ken Home was diagnosed with kaposi sarcoma (KS) caused by AIDS and died the following year. He was the first American patient to die of AIDS. In June 1981 it’s reported that several gay men died of a rare disease and KS is reported in multiple men in both New York and California. By July the Bay Area Reporter published an article called Gay Men Pneumonia and the New York Times published Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals. KS quickly gained a reputation as the gay cancer.
It wasn’t until 1982 that the term AIDS was first used. Around this time immunosuppressants were found in three people with hemophilia. This brought about the talk of developing guidelines for screening blood donations. In January of 1983 the San Francisco General Hospital opened Ward 86, a specialized facility for people with HIV and AIDS that also to this day still does research on the disease. On January 7, 1983 the first case of AIDS was found in women. By May Dr. Françoise Barré-Sinoussi won a Nobel Prize for reporting on the cause of AIDS and Aids officially made the front page of the New York Times. A month later the Denver Principles were put in place to protect people with AIDS and HIV from discrimination. For a time, due to widespread fear and panic, people with AIDS were ostracized because of the mass spread of misinformation. People were genuinely concerned about getting HIV and AIDS through something as simple as basic skin to skin contact, like a handshake. This is not true, you can only get HIV or AIDS through contact with contaminated body fluids or needles. Ryan White was banned from his middle school after contracting AIDS through contaminated blood in 1985. AIDS was publicly recognized by the president at the time until 1985. Through 1986-1991 several different foundations and educational programs were developed to decrease the growing number of HIV and AIDS cases and promote treatment research.
The AIDS epidemic in the U.S. had a death toll of around 500,000 people. Since then upwards of 42 million people have died worldwide due to AIDS.
I didn’t interview anyone about their experiences with the Covid-19 pandemic since by now we’ve all most likely discussed with our friends, teachers, other students, and family members what Covid was like for all of us. We live in the digital age where it’s very easy to open a social media app or google and look up videos of people talking about what Covid was like for them. One day our kids and maybe even our grandkids will be asking us about what Covid was like for us. It might even be for an assignment in English or History class. Sharing our experiences is part of being human and how our history continues. If you have the chance, talk to the older members of your family about their experiences with the AIDS epidemic and the other health crises of the 20th century. It’s a chance to learn first hand about people’s experiences with things that are now history.
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