![]() ![]() ![]() The Ghost of Pandemics Past We can only estimate the mortality rates of flu pandemics from generations ago, but we know enough to put today’s challenge in context. The world’s population grew throughout these years, and adjusting for that changing number yields excess death rates of about 52 per 100,000 from 1957 to 1958, 30 per 100,000 from 1968 to 1970, and 2.3 to 5.2 per 100,000 in 2009. The best reconstructions estimate that excess deaths-those presumably resulting from pandemics-ranged from 1.5 million to 4 million in the first of these three pandemics, from 1.1 million to 4 million in the second, and from 150,000 to 575,000 deaths in the third. ![]() Finally, there was the H1N1 virus, originating in Mexico and declared to be a pandemic by the World Health Organization on 11 June 2009 it stopped spreading before the end of the year. The second, also beginning in China, came in May 1968, when the H3N2 virus surfaced the first wave peaked before the year’s end, and in some countries the effects persisted until April 1970. The first event, caused by the H2N2 virus, began to spread from China in February 1957 and ended in April 1958. What I find strange is that the unfolding COVID-19 event has prompted relatively few references to the three latest pandemics, for which we do have good numbers. If we divide that number by the 1.8 billion people that were alive in the world, we get at a global mortality rate of about 2.8 percent. Published estimates range from about 17 million to 100 million, with 50 million being perhaps the most likely total. That pandemic began early in 1918, its third and final wave was spent only a year later, and we will never know the exact death toll. ![]() It was called the Spanish flu, though it had nothing whatever to do with Spain. When SARS-CoV-2, a new coronavirus, began to spread outside China in the early months of 2020, both the news media and scientific publications looked back to the most lethal pandemic in modern history. ![]()
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