Asian Flu

BrianTheElder said:

I was thinking about the extent to which our lives have changed with the Covid-19 pandemic, when I thought back to when I had Asian Flu. I checked, and this was in 1957, when I was 14 years old. At the time, pretty well everyone got it and it was pretty bad, meaning you felt terrible, with weakness and aches and pains and were in bed for several days.
Of course, we just accepted that it was inevitable and got on with life. No-one published numbers of how many people were ill or were dying and there was no media hype. I found a headline "the Asian flu spread to the United States by June 1957 where it caused about 70,000 deaths".
Is it just possible we are making too much of all this?

Click to expand...

There wasn't a lot of media hype about Spanish Flu either- governments did their best to hide the figures.
Didn't stop people dying though. I prefer information to be available.

BrianTheElder said:

I was thinking about the extent to which our lives have changed with the Covid-19 pandemic, when I thought back to when I had Asian Flu. I checked, and this was in 1957, when I was 14 years old. At the time, pretty well everyone got it and it was pretty bad, meaning you felt terrible, with weakness and aches and pains and were in bed for several days.
Of course, we just accepted that it was inevitable and got on with life. No-one published numbers of how many people were ill or were dying and there was no media hype. I found a headline "the Asian flu spread to the United States by June 1957 where it caused about 70,000 deaths".
Is it just possible we are making too much of all this?

Click to expand...

The 1957/8 Asian Flu pandemic was estimated to have caused 1-4 million deaths whereas the estimate for the 1918 flu pandemic was 20-100 million deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_pandemic If the Covid-19 is closer in severity to that of 1918 flu then I would say that the measures being introduced are warranted.

A team from the University of Southampton modelled the effect of using measures to mitigate the outbreak:-

BrianTheElder said:

Sorry, I wasn't around in 1918, but I experienced the Asian Flu of 1957 first-hand. My point is that life was simpler then and we just got on with it.

Click to expand...

Well, except for the million plus people who died.

We live in a different world now.
The internet makes our information sharing and level of communication completely different from even 30 years ago.

I think the situations in Spain, Italy and soon to be playing out in a hospital near you shows very clearly that no, we are not making too much of this.

BrianTheElder said:

Sorry, I wasn't around in 1918, but I experienced the Asian Flu of 1957 first-hand. My point is that life was simpler then and we just got on with it.

Click to expand...

I lost relatives to both of those. Still, let us know how you “get on” with this one.

Are we making too much of this?
I don't believe so.

But I would ask do we make enough of the common cold and normal viruses? Ok most people would get over these without any problem. But is that ok? Shouldn't we always protect the weak whose immunity may not be as strong as ours for whatever reason?

My son was born prematurely. His immune system wasn't brilliant. When he had a cold I kept him away from toddler group to protect others. Most mums just continued to take their children out and about and didn't think of those who would be very poorly if they caught it.

I for one will be more careful not to spread colds from now on. Thanks to COVID19 I am now more aware of those with cystic fibrosis and COPD etc. I wouldn't want to inflict breathing difficulties onto anyone else because of my thoughtlessness. As an asthmatic I have suffered at the hands of smokers (vapers are worse for me) walking down the street. I can't imagine what it would be like for those worse off than me.

Brunneria said:

We live in a different world now.
The internet makes our information sharing and level of communication completely different from even 30 years ago.

I think the situations in Spain, Italy and soon to be playing out in a hospital near you shows very clearly that no, we are not making too much of this.

Click to expand...

Yes and we didn't have millions of people traveling the globe in those days spreading the virus quicker and further.

@Geordie_P has it bang on. The ones who died aren’t here to talk unfortunately.

BrianTheElder said:

Is it just possible we are making too much of all this?

Click to expand...

In a word NO!

A Times newspaper comment (17 April) that ‘an influenza epidemic has affected thousands of Hong Kong residents’ heralded the start of rapid movement across the East with 100 000 cases in Taiwan by mid-May and over a million in India by June.

The first cases in the UK were in late June, with a serious outbreak in the general population occurring in August. From mid-September onwards the virus spread from the North, West, and Wales to the South, East, and Scotland. One GP recalled ‘we were amazed at the extraordinary infectivity of the disease, overawed by the suddenness of its outset and surprised at the protean nature of its symptomatology.

It peaked the week ending 17 October with 600 deaths reported in major towns in England and Wales. By early 1958 it was estimated that ‘not less than 9 million people in Great Britain had … Asian influenza during the 1957 epidemic. Of these, more than 5.5 million were attended by their doctors. About 14 000 people died of the immediate effects of their attack.’

Source: British Journal of General Practice.

One other thing, in those days they were actually in a position to close hospital wards if need be. If hospital beds have halved since 1988, what happened in the previous 30 years.

The NHS will not be able to treat the number of severe cases of this virus, especially as BoJo has actually refused the help offered by the EU in obtaining PPEs/ventilators because he's got this idea of not needing the EU so far up his backside that he can't back down. Us being sensible will help.

Within weeks this has gone from a "don't worry it's mild" to "old and underlying conditions" to" everyone is at risk". This is savage and it's only just starting. Even when this is over Governments need to learn big time from this because as the original posts states outbreaks happen. Sometimes you get Asian Flu, Bird Flu, SARS etc and it either kills thousands, millions, or it gets stopped in its tracks. One day something will have a 60, 70, 80% death rate and hangs in the air for days and unless we learn this current pandemic will look like a tea party compared.

Max68 said:

Within weeks this has gone from a "don't worry it's mild" to "old and underlying conditions" to" everyone is at risk".

Click to expand...

If we had believed the government it would be that. However, the World Health Organisation declared it a pandemic on March 11th. I certainly never believed it was mild, people were dying from complications, which bit of that was mild?

BoJo shaking hands with patients didn't help, what a Richard, that came back to bite him on the posterior. The government have done too little, too late. Now I see that the UK has turned down the offer made by the E.U., to join them in getting hold of large quantities of PPEs and possibly more important for those who get complications, ventilators. We've turned them down! Why! Because we're not in the E.U. I think when that is the issue, we really do have a bunch of kids in parliament.

If anyone loses their life because of a lack of ventilators it will be down to BoJo. What an idiot!

Maybe he is pitching his hopes on the Oxford Prof who have made these cheap ventilators which Sony is adding a PCB to. Saw it on the news the other day. Sounds promising but I wouldn't have expected them to be anything more than back ups.

Someone had a conspiracy theory last night that Boris, Hancock and Witty don't actually have the virus and it's their way of showing the public anyone can get it. However if that's the case (which I very much doubt it is) then they would only make things worse by all declaring they are fine in two weeks time!!!)

I wish them well.

BrianTheElder said:

Sorry, I wasn't around in 1918, but I experienced the Asian Flu of 1957 first-hand. My point is that life was simpler then and we just got on with it.

Click to expand...

Dying was just as painful for the families.

BrianTheElder said:

Of course, we just accepted that it was inevitable and got on with life

Click to expand...

However, many of the deaths from this flu are preventable. It was not inevitable, if the politicians and governments acted promptly on the advice given by the scientists. They didnt. Coping with an inevitable situation is NOT the same as coping with a situation which any ordinary person in the street knew was happening a month ago.

I hope Witty is ok, he is somewhat older than the others.
He always gives me the feeling he is uncomfortable with the proceedings.
D.

WHO estimate for annual deaths worldwide for seasonal influenza:

"The WHO estimates that between 290,000 and 650,000 respiratory deaths globally each year are associated with seasonal influenza."

Which would be an average of between 795 and 1780 deaths per day.

At this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had 2791 death on 26th March, and 3271 deaths on 27th March, and the pandemic is only just getting going.

I would say that we are not making too much of this. Quite the reverse.

lindisfel said:

Not heard anything over here about using one ventilator for two patients.
The yanks think it can be done.
D.

Click to expand...

Did you mean to reply to me?

The news needs to report of how many are actually recovering , probably quite alot. Ive stopped watching news as its started to annoy me. They tell us what they want to tell us , and mostly we believe it.