Spanish Flu and Covid-19: How the Invention of Wings Created a Pandemic World

            Global pandemics are a relatively new phenomenon in human history.  An origin for the common cold cannot easily be traced, however there is good reason to believe that global trade accelerated its prevalence and subsequent mutations.  Likewise, there is no recorded origin of influenza.  The first time it appears in historical literature is from Herodotus and Thucydides in ancient Greece, who each wrote what may have been the first descriptions of its symptoms.  From that point on, influenza outbreaks were regional epidemics up until the 20th century, when mobilization allowed it to spread and mutate continuously like the common cold. 

Few people know that prior to the 20th century, these were not seasonal cycles.  Global transportation was not as fluid since cars and airplanes had not been invented yet.  Viruses and plagues were confined to regions; even the Black Death did not escape Europe.  As the world globalized, so did the potential for lethal viruses and bacteria to spread. 

Covid-19 is the first pandemic with a known origin that does not seem to be going away.  It started severe, much like the Spanish flu from 1918, which saw similar mortality rates.  In the following years, as people built their immunity to Spanish flu in the 1920s, the virus took advantage of our newly globalized world, largely caused by the revolution in transportation.  It mutated with such a frequent subtlety that many thought it had ceased to exist, and most people today still believe it disappeared. 

But alarmingly, immunologists have discovered that it is probably still with us, in the form of mutations that have been occurring for decades.  “Analysis of newly discovered samples from the 1918 influenza pandemic found that every section of the virus' genome could have given rise to seasonal flu.” (Ashworth, 2022).  Thus, it has likely settled into our seasonal social pattern, catalyzed by modern human geographic systems, allowing it to mutate and avoid being permanently destroyed by vaccines.  The seasonal flu as we know it today could be the offspring of the worst influenza pandemic in history, which killed between 17-50 million people.   

We may be seeing a parallel event in modern times with the covid-19 pandemic.  It started strong and seems to be settling into a similar pattern that the Spanish flu adopted.  The good news is that if the pattern holds, our immunity to it will keep building, making it no more severe than the common flu.  The bad news is that it would mean it is here to stay, for as long as our world remains globalized.  And it will stay, even if we take further precautions to quarantine like China has done (which is alarming in itself).  The flu just survived two years of quarantine and social distancing; there is no reason for me to believe covid-19 wouldn’t do the same.

 

A graph illustrating similar global wave patterns between Spanish flu and covid-19.  Image courtesy of the CDC.

It appears the Spanish flu was so powerful that it found ways to survive by killing less people and decreasing its severity, lending it an important evolutionary advantage.  If the virus had kept being as severe as it was, it would not have been able to transmit as effectively.  A similar pattern is happening with covid-19, as the mortality rate has dropped substantially, and the new omicron variant isn't as lethal. These diseases only seem severe at first because it takes time to adapt to a host with maximum efficiency. Regardless, 50 thousand people still die from the flu every year, and we can probably expect a similar number with covid, mostly among the elderly.    

In the coming centuries, there may be more pandemics that survive initial turbulence the way Spanish flu and covid-19 did.  Diseases may compound until we are sick year-round, forcing us to mask up 24/7.  This does not indicate some revolutionary virus is going to wipe out mankind, as it (almost) did in the movie 12 Monkeys and in Stephen King’s The Stand.  It would be impractical for a virus to completely kill off its host the way it did in these stories.  The evolutionary advantage of a low mortality rate means that viruses are more likely to transmit their genes in order to survive. The most severe viruses, like E-coli and Marburg, seem to be hampered by their lethality, thankfully making them harder to globalize. 

It was the very evolution of wings that brought viruses like these with it.  Now that humans are flying, we should expect more of the same. The reason we get so many global viruses from birds and bats is that they are the only truly global class of species.  Each can transmit germs around the world in a short period of time, just like us. Wings, it seems, are the most prominent variable of global pandemics, regardless of the species.

Estimated statistics: 

	Spanish flu	Covid-19
Demographic	impacted all ages	impacted all ages
Mortality rate	2.5%	3.4%
Total deaths	17-50 million dead in one season	6.5 million in 3 years- likely "lower" from more  speedy information and quicker vaccines
Variants	pattern of decreasing severity	pattern of decreasing severity: alpha-delta-omicron-?

  

Source: 

Ashworth, James.  Natural History Museum. May 10, 2022.  Retrieved from https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2022/may/seasonal-flu-could-descend-from-deadly-1918-influenza-pandemic.html