The 1918 Pandemic and COVID-19 are Eerily Similar

The 1918 pandemic was absolutely horrific, leading to more deaths than the first two world wars combined.  It was an influenza outbreak that may have originated right here in the U.S., and there are definitely some parallels with the 2020 coronavirus outbreak.

Facts About the 1918 Pandemic

This article from Smithsonian Magazine contains an extensive amount of detail regarding the 1918 influenza pandemic.  Here are three facts and figures that will help put that infamous outbreak in perspective:

• The outbreak lasted only 15 months.
• It is estimated to have killed a whopping 50-100 million people worldwide (so if my math is correct that’s between 3.3 and 6.6 million deaths per month!).    
• Nearly 700,000 U.S. citizens died.

Those numbers are crazy even when compared to COVID-19, which is good news because it shows how much science and medicine have evolved in the past 100 years. 

The interesting thing, however, is that if you compare the 2020 coronavirus outbreak with the 1918 pandemic, it’s clear that history tends to repeat itself.  In fact, the parallels are downright eerie:

• Much like COVID-19, the 1918 pandemic initially set off very few alarm bells.  The outbreak was not taken as seriously as it should have been because even though many were getting sick, in the beginning it rarely killed people. 
• Much like COVID-19, there was a second wave.  The initial outbreak occurred in January 1918.  By April, officials were telling people the worst was over.  Unfortunately, the number of cases spiked during a second wave in August.  Ominously, a third wave occurred in January 1919.
• The federal government downplayed the magnitude of the problem to avoid creating panic.
• Steps were taken to reduce or prevent large gatherings to minimize the spread (ALA social distancing), and city streets were near empty because most people were self-quarantining.

Clearly, this is an example of history repeating itself.  That is why it is so critical to plan for the worst, and debrief after every event to capture lessons learned.  As emergency preparedness professionals, we need to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.  Unfortunately, society did not learn from the 1918 pandemic.  If it did, the 2020 outbreak would have most certainly been less severe – definitely a lesson learned for everyone in the emergency planning field.