And Now? (Covid Essay)

I wrote this at the start of the Covid epidemic.  I didn't edit it since.  The stock market was on a roller coaster, and people were debating  the correct response.   Six years have passed since then, and we have data regarding the loss of life.  I took this from Wikipedia updated to January 24, 2026.

7,107,739^[4] (updated 24 January 2026) confirmed COVID-induced deaths have been reported worldwide. As of January 2023, taking into account likely COVID-induced deaths via excess deaths, the 95% confidence interval suggests the pandemic has caused between 19.1 and 36  million deaths.^[5][6]   

I don't see a decline in racist attitudes today.  If anything, racists have since gone mainstream.  Vaccines were developed faster than anticipated.  

“What will our world look like after Covid-19?”   “Will we have a better world at the end of this?”  “How can we make a better world after this?”  My social media is overflowing with predictions, warnings and advice.  

“Will we come out of this to a cleaner world recovering from pollution?”  There are satellite feeds from NASA showing decreased pollution in cities like Edmonton, Venice, and Beijing. 

“Will we wake up one day to a world where every move is monitored and controlled?”  Then there are carefully considered opinion pieces by writers and thinkers like Yuval Noah Harari pointing to the liberties and freedoms that we may lose. 

“Will humanity care for one another like the doctors and nurses struggling on the front lines, or will we have a world where our leaders put their stock portfolios ahead of human life?”  Some political leaders say they’re fearful for the quality of life for their children and grandchildren, and they argue that the burden on the economy is worse than the potential loss of life. Some even argue that, because humanity has lived through these things before and survived, we are all overreacting and that life should go on as usual, and that the virus should run its course in spite of its toll on the old and weak and impoverished.

A look back at previous pandemics may provide answers and offer  a glimpse into the future.  The first pandemic that came to mind was the ‘Black Death’ which first exploded in Europe between 1347 and 1351. 

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The Black Death killed somewhere between 75 and 200 million people, and about 40 to 70 percent of Europe’s population.   Researchers found that the disease did not kill indiscriminately.  It preferentially killed the old, the weak, and the poor.   But researchers have also found that the descendants of plagued populations share changes in their genetic makeup that resulted in hardier populations, although genetic diversity decreased because entire groups were wiped out.  During the Black Death, Italians devised a 40-day isolation period for the sick, likely inspired by biblical events that lasted 40 days.   The term "quarantine" as we know it originates from that time.  Because England didn't quarantine the sick like the Italians did there are less variable DNA sequences for the English.

Historians say that the plague shook the survivors’ religious faith and weakened the hold of the church on daily life, which eventually led to the Reformation.  Other survivors saw the plague as God’s wrath, and lived lives of flagellation and survivors' guilt to atone for humanity’s sins.   Jews, however, quickly became the primary scapegoats for the plague since Jews were often merchants and the infected rats were carried by merchants.   The subsequent pogroms and persecution of Jews ultimately forced many of them to migrate to Eastern Europe. 

The immediate economic shock was soon followed by a surplus of goods which resulted in a lower prices and a better quality of life for plague survivors.  Eventually this gave rise to a working class.  As some princes were even forced to till their own fields because populations were so decimated, the surviving peasants were able to negotiate better living conditions.  Small farmers even abandoned marginal farmland to increase efficiency.

Historians tell us that after the initial economic decline, the surplus of goods, food, and free time eventually gave humanity a legacy of art and thought that still stand today: the Renaissance.   The easing of previous harsh conditions even allowed working people easier access to beer, and people established the forerunners of today’s pubs. 

But, of course, there were other diseases rampaging through human communities throughout that time. 

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One such disease was smallpox, although smallpox outbreaks were epidemics rather than pandemics in the true sense of the word.   Historians believe that early outbreaks of smallpox were responsible for the ‘Plague of Athens’ in 430 BC as well as the ‘Antonine Plague’ of 180 BC, which killed anywhere between  3.5 million and 7 million people in the Roman Empire.

The most common form of the smallpox virus killed about 30 percent of its victims while blinding and disfiguring many others. But in the Americas, which had no exposure to the virus prior to the arrival Europeans, Indigenous populations saw fatalities of up to 90%. Although there were a multitude of reasons for the population decline of Native Americans, and Indigenous populations still have not recovered, smallpox epidemics played a major role.   

In 1796 an English doctor named Edward Jenner, building on previous work by Middle east physicians, successfully developed a primitive vaccine to combat the spread of smallpox.   Vaccines gained acceptance slowly, but with improvements in technology and science, countries one after another rid themselves of the smallpox virus.   

In spite of wide-spread vaccinations there were still from 10 million to 15 million cases of smallpox and 2 million deaths in 1967, according to the World Health Organization. That year the World Health Organization launched a global immunization campaign to wipe out smallpox completely. By 1980 the World Health Organization declared that smallpox had been eradicated from the world, with the exception of two guarded laboratories that kept samples in storage.  This was a very impressive achievement considering that viruses were not really understood until the 1930’s.   

Another impressive achievement was humanity’s battle against tuberculosis.  By the late 1890’s it was widely understood that TB was caused by bacteria, but it still caused one in seven deaths world-wide and was the third ranked cause of death in America.   

Therefore cities and municipalities took action to reduce transmission of this disease.  New York, for example, launched the “War on Tuberculosis” public health campaign to discourage cup-sharing and prompted states to ban spitting inside public buildings, transit and outdoor spaces.   In 1880 more than 15,000 horse carcasses were collected and removed from New York streets where children played among the carcasses.  Plumbing and sewage systems were developed and paired with tenement house reform to remove excrement from the public streets.  Until then people often simply emptied chamber pots out their windows and the cities were overflowing in filth. 

“Disease can permanently alter society, and often for the best by creating better practices and habits. Crisis sparks action and response. Many infrastructure improvements and healthy behaviours we consider normal today are the result of past health campaigns that responded to devastating outbreaks."[1]  Those outbreaks, however, paled in comparison to the pandemic of 1918 and 1919: the Spanish Flu.

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The Spanish flu pandemic was fairly well documented compared to previous outbreaks of disease, but time, censorship, and gaps in scientific knowledge still obscured much.   Even the name, Spanish Flu, is misleading.  Spanish newspapers were the first to report on it, but the virus did not originate in Spain nor was Spain the most affected nation.  Spain was a neutral country in the First World War and therefore its newspapers were not subject to wartime censorship, and because many in the world learned about the outbreak through Spanish news reports, the name stuck.   

Today we know that the Spanish flu was a particularly virulent strain of the Type A, H1N1 virus.  Although estimates vary greatly because many governments did not keep accurate records, the virus killed anywhere from 25 million to 100 million people worldwide. The flu affected 28% of all Americans, and claimed an estimated 675 thousand lives in America, 288 thousand in Britain, and over 12 million in India. The mortality rate among infected people was around 20%.  Many lives were lost to secondary bacterial infections, and pneumonia often set in within two days.  Lives were even lost to massive overdoses of aspirin.  (One company, claiming that their brand of mint would cure the flu, went so far as to disguise their advertisement to resemble an official government announcement.)  Most patients, however, experienced symptoms of typical influenza with a 3- to 5-day fever followed by complete recovery.  About one half of the deaths were relatively healthy twenty to forty year-olds, whereas previous influenza strains targeted the very young and old.  This is likely another reason the Spanish flu is so strongly associated with the trenches of the First World War. 

Some historians believe that the virus spread from military camps in the American Midwest to the trenches in Europe as America mobilized troops for the First World War.  Others believe that the virulent waves of the virus originated in the trenches and traveled around the world as soldiers were de-mobilized at the end of the war.  There may be truth to both theories because there were three different waves of this virus over a three year period.    Scientists and historians are also looking at a different theory: that the virus originated in China in 1917 and traveled to Europe with Chinese labourers that were brought there to work on the trenches.  In spite of flu outbreaks in China in 1917, about 25 thousand of the 96 thousand Chinese labourers landed in Vancouver and traveled across Canada under guard and in sealed rail cars.    Three thousand of them ended up in medical quarantine with flu-like symptoms, their illnesses often blamed on their "lazy" natures by Canadian doctors, who “had very stereotypical, racist views of the Chinese." [2]

The first wave of the Spanish flu appeared in the United States from about March 1918 until August 1918.  This wave was relatively mild with few recorded deaths.  The second wave, which emerged in September, was highly fatal and responsible for most of the deaths in the pandemic.  A third wave in spring of 1919 was more lethal than the first but less so than the second.  Some scientists believe that the increase in deaths in the second wave was caused by conditions that favoured the spread of a deadlier strain. People with mild cases stayed home, but those with severe cases were often crowded together in hospitals and camps, which increased the transmission of the more lethal strains. 

In Britain and France schools were closed and students dismissed, but school closures were less accepted in the United States.  Only some schools, theatres, churches, and dance halls in the United States were closed -- depending on the local health authority.    Studies of seventeen cities that kept records found a clear correlation between the number of interventions applied and the resulting peak death rate. Research by the National Institutes of Health in the United States show that cities where public health officials imposed social containment measures within a few days after the first local cases were reported cut peak weekly death rates by up to half compared with cities that waited just a few weeks to respond.  Overall mortality was also lower in cities that implemented early interventions, but the effect was smaller.

To compare a best case and worse case example:  St. Louis introduced a broad series of public health measures to contain the flu within two days of the first reported cases. Philadelphia used similar interventions, but took two weeks to implement them, and as a result, peak mortality rates were higher.  The peak mortality rate in St. Louis was only one-eighth that of Philadelphia.      

Cities that relaxed their restrictions too soon after the peak of the pandemic often had to reintroduce restrictions because of the re-emergence of infection.  San Francisco, for example, had among the most effective measures, but studies show that had it left controls in place continuously from September 1918 through May 1919 the city might have reduced deaths by more than 90 percent.[3]

The International Monetary Fund said that the US economy dipped at the height of the pandemic. There were fairly modest declines in production and in retail sales. However, according to a recent study by the Canadian Department of Finance, these declines point to an annual loss in output of just 0.4%.  The International Monetary Fund went on to say in its report: "The Spanish flu struck when the US economy was on a war footing. There may have been considerable social pressure on workers to stay at work, and the lack of a formal safety net may have threatened workers with high financial costs in case of absenteeism…”  Stock-market returns for 1918 would have been affected by the end of the First World War, but the S&P 500 Index fell by 24.7% in 1918, and rose by 8.9% in 1919. Britain's equity market rose by 25.4% in 1918 and by 27.0% in 1919.   Economic declines seem to have been negligible or non-existent. 

Gertrude Stein coined the phrase “The Lost Generation” referring to demographic changes caused by the loss of 100 million people born between 1883 and 1900 to the First World War and the Spanish flu.  One result of this demographic change was that women in North America entered the workforce in unparalleled numbers.   

As the pandemic subsided numerous health and hospital boards called for a vaccine to prevent another outburst of the flu, or at least to deal with the fatal secondary infections of the illness, but vaccines played no roles in the battle against the Spanish flu. The virus was not even isolated and sequenced until 2005.  Vaccines did play a major role in the next pandemic, the Asian flu of 1957. 

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The Asian flu pandemic of 1957 is considered the mildest of the three pandemics of the twentieth century, but it still killed between one and two million people world-wide.   The statistics vary because some jurisdictions counted only deaths directly attributed to the flu whereas other jurisdictions included deaths caused by secondary infections. For example: There were an estimated nine million infections in Britain, five million of which required medical attention and 30 thousand of which ended in death.  Six thousand of those deaths in Britain were directly caused by the Asian flu, while 24 thousand deaths were caused by secondary infections such as pneumonia.

This was a new virus strain, the influenza Type A H2N2, which was a blend of human and avian viruses.   In April 1957 newspapers in London reported an epidemic of 250 thousand infections in Hong Kong and within five months the virus had covered the globe. 

By midsummer it had reached the United States, where it appears to have initially infected relatively few people. By November 1957, the worst seemed to be over.   In December however, the devastating second wave struck the United States infecting especially young children, the elderly and pregnant women. Whereas some infected individuals experienced only minor symptoms, such as cough and mild fever, others experienced life-threatening complications such as pneumonia.  By March 1958 an estimated 69,800 deaths had occurred in the United States.[4]

The Asian flu pandemic infected many school aged children because of their close contact in crowded settings.   During the 1957-1958 pandemic, a World Health Organization expert panel suggested that the avoidance of crowding may be important in reducing the spread of the virus.     

In 1957, worldwide surveillance for influenza was less extensive than it is today, but still laboratories had the vaccine in production within three months of the first infections.  The first doses of vaccine became available in August or September but by mid-October at the peak of the US pandemic fewer than half of the approximately 60 million doses produced had been delivered.   There is no doubt, however, that the rapid development of a vaccine against the H2N2 virus and the availability of antibiotics to treat secondary infections limited the spread and mortality of the pandemic. 

The economic fallout of the Asian flu was negligible, as the S&P 500 Index rose by 24.0% in 1957 and by 2.9% in 1958. Britain's equity market fell by 5.8% in 1957, and rose by 40.0% in 1958.

Some historians now believe that the Great Leap Forward famine in China was not simply a man-made disaster caused by misguided economic policies, but partially due to the Asian flu pandemic of 1957.  

The Asian flu pandemic subsided in 1958, but there is reason to believe the virus mutated and returned to cause the next pandemic: the Hong Kong flu in 1968.

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1968 flu pandemic, also called Hong Kong flu pandemic, was a global outbreak of influenza type A H3N2 that originated in China in July 1968 and lasted until 1969–70.  Scientists suspect that this virus evolved from the strain of influenza that caused the 1957 pandemic.   People who had been exposed to the 1957 virus apparently retained immune protection against the 1968 virus, which would explain the mildness of the 1968 outbreak relative to the Spanish flu pandemic.  In comparison to other pandemics, the Hong Kong flu yielded a low death rate, with a fatality rate of less than 0.5%.  Still, this pandemic killed one million people world-wide,[5] and about 100 thousand in the United States. 

By September 1968, the flu reached India, Australia, and Europe. That same month, the virus entered California from returning Vietnam War troops but did not become widespread in the United States until December 1968.  It reached Japan, Africa, and South America in early 1969. 

This pandemic, like previous pandemics, occurred in two waves, and in most places the second wave caused a greater number of deaths than the first wave.  In the United States, the first wave was more fatal.   This virus also caused illness in varying degrees of severity in different populations. For example, illness affected only small numbers of people in Japan, whereas it was widespread and deadly in the United States.

In the Northern hemisphere the pandemic did not gain momentum until the winter school holidays, which limited the spread of infection.  The death rate was also reduced by improved medical care to the very ill.  But the highest death rate was again experienced by the most susceptible groups: infants and the elderly.  

Although a vaccine was developed against the virus, it became available only after the pandemic had peaked in many countries.  The H3N2 virus that caused the 1968 pandemic is still around and is considered to be a strain of seasonal influenza.  (It is interesting to note that in the 1990s a closely related H3N2 virus was isolated from pigs. Scientists suspect that the human H3N2 virus jumped from humans to pigs and infected animals now show symptoms of the swine flu.)    

This Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968 changed the course of history as much as the course of the stock market, which was little if any at all.  The S&P 500 Index rose by 12.5% in 1968 and by 7.4% in 1969 while Britain's market rose by 57.5% in 1968, and fell by -15.6% in 1969. 

 

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So what will change after this pandemic?

Some insist that social containment measures  damage the economy, but I am thankful that our governments listen to health authorities instead.  History has proven that quarantines slow the spread of pandemics.  It is comforting that humanity values life over money, in spite of a few sociopaths who put the health of their stock portfolios ahead of the lives of their neighbours.  

We should not “get back to normal” too early.  There is ample proof that pandemics travel in waves of two or three, and ending containment measures too early will only cause more deaths and illness.

We know that vaccines are effective in stopping the spread of virus and disease, but it takes time to develop and distribute vaccines.  Good hygiene, complying with health authorities’ recommendations, and helping out our neighbours will buy time for scientists and governments to get that job done.  It's not ‘government over-reach’, but simply why we organize into communities in the first place.  

History has proven that pandemics and subsequent containment strategies have a negligible effect on the economy.  Even those times when pandemics caused catastrophic fatalities, the economies not only recovered but improved over pre-pandemic times.

As nations enforce quarantines to keep their citizens safe, some argue that we’re losing our freedom.   People in late 19^th century cities lost the freedom to leave the carcasses on the street.  Then they were forced to install plumbing and sanitation in their homes by assorted levels of government.  Eventually they were punished for throwing excrement onto the streets.  Some people likely viewed these measures as ‘government overreach’ -- just some people see mandatory vaccinations as ‘government overreach’ today.  Ensuring the safety of citizens is not ‘government overreach’ -- burning books is.

It’s unlikely that governments will collapse after the pandemic, unless they were already on the brink of revolution before.  Cameras and apps to track citizens were used by governments since the technology first appeared,  pandemic or not. We have protected and nurtured our democracies before the pandemic and I am confident that we will continue. 

Racism has been around for a long time and history indicates that this pandemic will only increase racist behaviours.  Historically, racism swelled because people blamed other groups for the disease.  Recently some of our leaders publicly blame China and the Chinese for this virus.  Some people already feel empowered enough to urge consumers on Facebook to stop buying Chinese products.  Racism has to stop, and we need to protect others through legislation and strong laws.

We learned that only a few weeks of reduced economic activity allows our environment to recover measurably.  So we now know that a simple change in our behaviours will create a cleaner environment, and that it’s not as complicated as some corporations, economists, and legislators want us to believe.   Now that we know we can do it we should get the job done as soon as possible.  

Health professionals over the entire globe have unquestioningly risked their lives and health to cure patients.   Some health-care authorities endeavor to preserve lives by over-riding a few short-sighted leaders.  Custodians, grocery store clerks, electricians, truck drivers, and entire communities pull together to provide services and help their neighbours in spite of the possible consequences, and I see a renewed appreciation for those people by those around us.  These actions alone can provide a solid foundation for a better post-pandemic world -- if we can keep it up.

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[1] “How Epidemics of the Past Changed the Way Americans Lived”  BY KATHERINE A. FOSS,  SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE,  4/1/2020

[2] Originated in China, Historians Say Chinese laborers transported across Canada thought to be source.

BY DAN VERGANO, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PUBLISHED JANUARY 24, 2014

[3] Rapid Response was Crucial to Containing the 1918 Flu Pandemic --Historical Analyses Help Plan for Future Pandemics.  NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH, RELEASED APRIL 2, 2007

[4] Some estimates for the United States are as high as 116 thousand deaths

[5] Some estimates are as high as four million deaths