Second Waves Are the Deadliest
By: Alan Trapulionis
Tags: Coronavirus, World War I, Covid 19, History, Spanish Flu

Second Waves Are the Deadliest

Historical mortality data is pretty clear

Medical men wore masks to avoid the flu at U.S. Army hospital. Nov. 19, 1918. Shutterstock image

By the end of August 1918, the Spanish Influenza seemed to have given up. Even though it properly messed up military operations — three-quarters of French troops, half the British forces, and over 900,000 German soldiers got sick — the mortality rates weren’t considered alarming, according to Laura Spinney’s Pale Rider.

Around 75,000 people had died in the U.S. from the virus during the first months of 1918, which was just 12,000 more than the flu mortality figure from the first half of 1915.

Over the next three months, the Spanish Influenza would take most of its toll. Spread by military troops, the virus claimed 292,000 lives in the United States alone — more than a tenfold increase compared to the fall of 1915. India was hit the hardest, with estimated 12.5 to 20 million casualties.

Such behavior isn’t exclusive to the Spanish flu. Swine flu, Influenza’s modern cousin, also seemed to be more problematic with the second wave. According to a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the second wave of the Swine flu was “substantially greater,” causing 4.8 times more hospital admissions, 4.6 times more deaths and four times more ICU cases.

The same was true for the second wave of the 1889 flu outbreak, which accounted for 58,000 of the pandemic’s total 100,000 casualties.

Nobody knows exactly why the second wave of Inluenza turned out to be so deadly. According to James Harris, a historian at Ohio State University, it was the unwillingness to impose quarantine measures during wartime — allowing infected soldiers to travel across Europe. In the U.S., for example, a full-fledged lockdown was only implemented on October 5, 1918.

There are theories that the second wave was caused by a mutation of the initial virus, but those are unconfirmed, as usually it takes years for viruses to escape the population immunity and readjust. Plus, we only have virus samples from the second wave remaining, so scientists can’t even tell for sure whether the three waves of the Spanish flu were caused by the same virus.

Covid-19 is considerably different from Influenza

The good news is that the novel coronavirus is acting differently from the previous flu outbreaks.

First of all, the symptoms are different. In addition to traditional flu symptoms — fever, cough, fatigue — coronavirus also surprised us with loss of taste and smell, “brain fog,” and even heart damage. The symptoms also take longer to show: with flu, people develop symptoms within one to four days after getting infected, whereas it can take as long as fourteen days for coronavirus patients to show symptoms.

Coronavirus also seems to be more contagious. Flu patients are most contagious during the first few days after showing symptoms, while coronavirus patients remain contagious even ten days after showing first symptoms. As a result, Covid-19 patients seem to infect 2.2 people on average, whereas the figure for seasonal flu is just 1.3.

The risk groups are different. Both viruses are the most dangerous to the young and the old. However, flu seems to be more dangerous to young children, while school-aged children appear to be more vulnerable to Covid-19.

There were significant differences even among the previous flu outbreaks. For example, the 1889 pandemic lasted for three years — with almost twelve-month breaks between the three waves. The deadly second wave of the Spanish Influenza, however, manifested only months after the first wave had died down.

No time to relax yet

While coronavirus is considerably different from Influenza, it is important to keep in mind that the second waves of previous pandemics have historically been greater both in spread and in death toll. Plus, the first wave of the coronavirus isn’t even over yet.

So keep your mask on, and encourage everyone you know to keep taking precautions. Wearing a mask during sex might be an overkill, but we’re not out of the woods yet, and our small sacrifices today can save thousands of lives in the years to come.