Pandemic 1918 by Catharine Arnold - Book Review

I had two thoughts come to mind, again and again, while reading Pandemic 1918. My first reoccurring thought was, "Damn, we got lucky with this recent pandemic." The second was, "Shit, the more things change, the more they stay the same."

We got lucky because the COVID-19 pandemic, while bad, did not unleash the hellish apocalyptic landscape that pop culture and infotainment sources love to envision and exploit. Thank mythical-god for that, at least. The nightmare scenario of the 2011 bio-thriller Contagion remains a chilling hypothetical "What if?" As does the End Times scenario of Stephen King's The Stand. 

But there were a lot of disheartening similarities between the 1918 pandemic and that of 2020. People dismissing and/or downplaying the looming viral threat? Check. People fighting mask mandates? Check. People believing that the 'true' illness was, if fact, not what people were actually getting sick and dying from? Check. People arguing that the illness was actually a bio-weapon? Check.

Did we learn nothing? Because it kind of seems that way.

The 'average' seasonal influenza tends to kill the elderly (those over 65), the very young (those aged 5 and under), and the immunocompromised. A fact that helped a few medical professionals be somewhat dismissive of an outbreak of influenza in the early days of the 1918 pandemic. Only after a distressing and disturbing number of healthy adults, the kind that usually contract and recover from the flu in a matter of days, got sick and died did the severity of this new strain of influenza begin to be taken seriously.

Not that there was all that much that could have been done, other than encourage people to engage in social distancing and stay outside, in the fresh air, for as long as possible. Because the medical technology and resources needed to combat the pandemic did not exist yet. Then again, the people of today are pushing back against those technologies and resources. Go figure. 

Which brings me to another frustrating similarity between the 1918 and 2020 pandemics. There were a lot of commentators and pundits that liked to dismiss COVID-19 as a nuisance. One that was no more dangerous than the flu. My response to these incredulous at best, and down right callous at worst, statements was to think, "Don't you know how many people die from the 'average' flu every year?" In the United States alone the number fluctuates from 10 to 50 thousand people. Globally, on average, the total is half a million. That is a lot of people dying from what is being dismissed as a nothing burger of an illness.

But the deaths from the 1918 pandemic dwarf those numbers. An estimated 100 million people died. What made this outbreak so virulent and deadly? Current research and testing point to the 1918 influenza being a form of bird flu that adapted to humans. An adaptation that provoked a lethal auto-immune response called a cytokine storm. That is what some are theorizing killed so many people.

Theories aside, Pandemic 1918 is filled with chilling and heartbreaking stories and images of the global devastation that was wrought by this new strain of influenza. One I think a lot of people should read, especially those who still dismiss COVID-19 as being 'no worse' than the flu.