Past should not be ignored in the present predicament

It is a well-known fact that a human body can host numerous different diseases, nevertheless, it has a tendency to protect itself from a foreign material that is perceived to be harmful. Infection depends on the person’s ability to resist diseases and therefore, older adults and people of any age who have serious underlying medical conditions are always at a higher risk for severe illness.

1918 pandemic

There are almost countless diversifications of the influenza virus and they are denoted by the combinations of surface proteins: hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). In 1918, one such deadly influenza that profoundly impacted this Earth which came to be erroneously known as Spanish flu (H1N1) and it infected around 500 million people in the world. The effect was so devastating that it inundated all medical care centers and morgues, and sabotaged almost a quarter of the world's population at the time. Now, it seems that history is repeating itself; the novel Corona outbreak has created havoc in the world, causing illness to people from the common cold to more severe diseases such as SARS and MERS.

Although the conditions at the time of the Spanish flu pandemic were quite different from what they are today. The world was a very different place back then. We were not as technologically advanced as we are today, for instance, there were no electron microscopes to see viruses, no lasers to burn tumors and no robotic surgeries rendering minimal scarring. It was nearly impossible to detect people with mild symptoms of a disease. Juxtapose this with the fact that we had the advantage of less population. Presently, we have almost 4 times the population of that time and hence more are the chances for any communicable disease to spread exponentially. Therefore, it is needless to say that conditions will be worse than our previous experiences.

During a pandemic, there are various perturbations in the community. Other than the health services, there is a catastrophic effect on the workforce and hence, normal infrastructure operations that require manpower for its functioning, suffer the ramifications. As a result, mankind faces a huge vulnerability having obstreperous effects on the fundamental necessities of life. People not only die from the influenza virus but also from a shortage of basic amenities. In India, the situation with COVID-19 is turning rather serious with fatalities increasing by the day. Such infectious outbreaks are terrifying and more deadly than conventional enmity. So, this is something that we should pay attention to, what we forget in day-to-day lives. If we slow down the initial pattern of growth, we can make a massive difference in terms of how many people will eventually suffer from this pandemic overall.