2020 Covid-19 Pandemic Panic! Why Were the Responses in 1957 and 1968 So Different?
Over the last 50 years, the world has gone mad?
As I approach my 72nd birthday I realise that I’ve survived the 1957 Asian flu and 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemics as well as the more recent SARS, MERS and Swine flu outbreaks.
And now I intend to survive the Covid-19 pandemic as well!
Since the start of this event, I have been somewhat sceptical of the actions and reactions of governments around the world — in many cases appearing to be the blind leading the blind with their extremely varied and questionable “scientific models”.
As time has gone on the initial subservience of populations has turned into questions and even anger because in many cases it doesn’t seem right or fair.
In this context, I recently read a great article by Jeffrey A Tucker titled “Woodstock Occurred in the Middle of a Pandemic” which prompted me to think about how the world has changed over the last 50 years. And what a change!
To understand the context of my thinking I’ve started with a brief account of the 1957 and 1968 pandemics.
The 1957 Asian Flu Pandemic
First identified in February 1957 in East Asia it later spread worldwide. This pandemic was the second major influenza pandemic to occur in the 20th century;
The outbreak caused an estimated 1 to 2 million deaths worldwide and was the least severe of the three influenza pandemics of the 20th century.
As with the 1968 flu pandemic, the 1957 outbreak was associated with variation in susceptibility and the course of illness. Whereas some infected individuals experienced only minor symptoms, such as a cough and mild fever, others experienced life-threatening complications such as pneumonia.
People who were unaffected by the virus were believed to have possessed protective antibodies to other, closely related strains of influenza.
The 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 world population in 1957 was 2.9 million so in proportion to today’s population of 7.8 million the deaths would have been between 2.7 and 5.4 million.
The 1968 Hong Kong Flu Pandemic
The final pandemic of the 20th Century was the 1968 Hong Kong flu epidemic which like Covid-19 originated in China. This outbreak lasted from July 1968 until 1970. The statistics are a bit sketchy (sound familiar?) but it is reported to have killed somewhere between 1 to 4 million people (Or in proportion to today’s population of 7.8 million between 2 and 8 million).
Aside: The population in 1968 was half of 2020 — in 50 years the world population has doubled!
The pandemic occurred in two waves, and in most places, the second wave caused a greater number of deaths than the first wave.
The pandemic caused varying degrees of illness in different countries. For example, it affected only a small number of people in Japan, whereas it was widespread and deadly in the United States.
The highest levels of mortality were associated with the most susceptible groups, namely infants and the elderly.
As the 1968 strain was similar to the 1957 strain, people who had been exposed to the 1957 virus retained some immunity against the 1968 virus. This could explain the mildness of the 1968 outbreak relative to the pandemic of 1918–19 where between 19 and 25 million people died.
The Wall Street Journal explained. “The novel virus triggered a state of emergency in New York City; caused so many deaths in Berlin that corpses were stored in subway tunnels; overwhelmed London’s hospitals, and in some areas of France left half of the workforce bedridden.”
As John Fund notes in National Review, “Hundreds of thousands were hospitalized in the U.S. as the disease hit all 50 states by Christmas 1968.”
Five hundred thousand young people attended Woodstock in August of 1969 — right in the middle of the pandemic.
The Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing pandemic first reported in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.
As of 7 May 2020, more than 3.77 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in over 187 countries and territories, resulting in more than 264,000 deaths.
Like the 1968 flu, it is fatal primarily to people older than 65 with pre-existing conditions and other ages with pre-existing conditions but unlike the 1968 flu, it has a limited effect on the young.
The Striking Differences between 1957 and 1968 and 2020
Unlike the current lockdown situations, in 1957 and 1968 economies were not shut down, schools weren’t closed and things like concerts continued. Bars, restaurants and cafes stayed open. People went to work and life went on as before.
It appears that there was no political blame for the spreading of the virus. There was no “war” talk. No “war” rooms. No “command centres”.
“No mothers were arrested for taking their kids to other homes. No surfers were arrested. No daycares were shut even though there were more infant deaths with this virus than the one we are experiencing now. There were no suicides, no unemployment, no drug overdoses.”
There were no lists of essential products or essential businesses. No banning the sales of cigarettes or alcohol. No “crowdsourced censorship”. No equivalent of people taking pictures of joggers or old ladies walking their dogs and indignantly posting them on social media.
People went on with their lives … just being careful!
Tucker continues “Media covered the pandemic but it never became a big issue. Which raises the question: why was this different?.”
I was brought up in an era when you and friends got chickenpox, measles, mumps, German measles, or scarlet fever. Friends also succumbed to polio until a vaccine was developed in the mid-1950s.
Tucker’s reflections about his parent’s attitudes resonated with me as it was how my parents treated me:
“They had a whole protocol to make a child feel better about being sick. I got a “sick toy,” unlimited ice cream, Vicks rub on my chest, a humidifier in my room, and so on.
They would constantly congratulate me on building immunity. They did their very best to be happy about my viruses while doing their best to get me through them.”
Have we become sheeple? Given up all our decision making to governments who don’t have a great track record of much success in anything. Should they rather let nature take its course while we have the responsibility of carrying on our lives behaving like responsible humans?
So will we ever understand the ongoing government actions which appear to have no consideration for the future or the most vulnerable in society?
The 20th Century pandemics accepted the course of nature whereas governments today seem to think that every problem can be overcome by declaring a “war”. Often over issues which they have no chance of defeating. With this comes all the trappings of war councils and restrictions and the increased use of the police and military stripping away the rights of citizens.
John Fund relates two stories from the 1968 pandemic which illustrates the stoicism of the time:
The first recently told to Travel Weekly by Marilyn Brown who worked at the Los Angeles Department of Social Services during the Hong Kong flu:
“Other than my coworkers bringing in alcohol to wipe down their desks and wipe down pencils and not use pencils that clients had used, we didn’t do anything,” .
And the other story from Philip Snashall, a now-retired professor of medicine, wrote in the British Medical Journal that his two-year-old daughter contracted the first known case of the Hong Kong flu to hit Europe.
“How things change, the stock market did not plummet, we were not besieged by the press, men in breathing apparatus did not invade my daughter’s playgroup.”
Millions of people around the world are dying of starvation, millions of people do not have the luxury of social distancing and staying at home. With no homes and no food, what options do they have?
It appears that the more advanced societies have led the way into a long dark humanitarian and economic abyss.
Even public-health experts such as Doctors Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx admit that an economic lockdown is an untried and untested theory.
Medical technology has vastly improved over the last 50 years. But this knowledge appears to have induced a Dunning-Kruger illusion — making us believe we know more than we do. Creating models with limited variables and filled with dubious assumptions and governments blindly following them to justify their questionable actions.
Has “our excessive adoration of predictive modelling got out of control to the point that we let a physicist with ridiculous models frighten the world’s governments into violating the human rights of billions of people?”
We should be asking more fundamental questions, like “Do these trillion-dollar experiments in lockdowns work?” or finally “Enough is enough. Is it not time to get back to a more “normal” life again?”
There is no doubt that the limited responses to the 1957 and 1968 flu pandemics had humanitarian costs in terms of lives lost. Nevertheless, this was the model Sweden used for their current response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Their response is very different from how the bulk of the countries around the world responded. With their focus being on the short term saving of lives.
These decisions resulted in devastating economic costs and the ongoing costs to humanity are incalculable and will last long into the future.
So the final question is, will the lockdown strategy turn out to be the best response? Will it be the optimum long-term decision for the world?
