Corona reveals: the Spanish flu

The Spanish flu

It is all nothing compared to the Spanish flu that ravaged the world’s population from 1918 to 1920, affecting half a billion earthlings, with between fifty and a hundred million deaths in all countries combined in all continents. This happened just after World War I, which had also claimed millions of victims, but that was almost little compared to what the influenza virus did in those years.

Flu and pseudo flu taken together, say acute upper respiratory tract infections with or without muscle aches, have this in common that they can knock out a child or an adult for a few days, but usually you survive. Mortality, on the other hand, is significant for newborns, pregnant women, patients with one or more long-term illnesses and the very elderly.

The Spanish flu killed more people than the AIDS epidemic did in the first twenty-five years of its existence. You also have to put that somewhat in the context of world relations in those days after the Great War. Large quantities of troops were being shipped etc. The world had become global. Even remote archipelagos in the South Pacific and even the South Pole have been affected.

The flu permeated everywhere and did not destroy humanity, just as war in all its folly did not. It is always the defenseless and the weak who pay the price. That seems to be a condition of human existence. That we as a species then devise all sorts of forms of solidarity, including sometimes restrictive measures, to protect those weak, is to our credit and constitutes a moral obligation.

You can anchor that evangelically as in my case, but for others who don’t care about Jesus Christ, we can also reach back to the Enlightenment to justify that ethical appeal. Nevertheless, we will always remain critical and study the data, and not hide our inferences.

We all have to sit this ride out together now and not act too crazy, because you’re already acting crazy enough.

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