As the world struggles to deal with the coronavirus (COVID-19), an academic is turning to history to try and find answers from past tragedies. His focus is on the deadly Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918, which killed around 50 million people worldwide.
Historian and research associate at Stellenbosch and Bournemouth University, Dr Dean Allen, believes there are a lot of lessons that can be learnt from history. He says the Spanish Flu shares similarities to what the world is going through now.
Dr Allen has been hosting informative webinars on the subject.
“These kinds of challenges have been faced in the past and will be faced again. It’s how we can learn from history that’s the important thing. Here in SA for example in 1918, it was one of the worst affected countries in the world. Three hundred thousand people died in six weeks from the Spanish Flu, which is quite incredible. Now of course the figures we are looking at today, all the deaths are unnecessary I believe, but I think we can get comfort from the fact that the world did recover from these pandemics in the past.”
Check out my interview with @SABCNews on #SABC Channel 404 from today ???#Interview #SABCNews #News #SouthAfrica #Covid_19 #Covid19SA #Corona #History #Author #Speaker @DiBrown5 @cotterill_david @thejaxblog @GoSocialSA @THEnosyRosy @witchhusband @ARWBS3 https://t.co/vb31oo6bRa pic.twitter.com/lCpchOmQ18
— Dean Allen (@Dr_DeanAllen) May 9, 2020
The Spanish flu originated in the United States and spread by movement from one country to another. Dr Allen says soldiers that were sent to Europe spread the flu.
“And inadvertently, the soldiers who were sent to Europe spread this flu like symptoms with them and it became one of the world’s greatest pandemics as we know. The Americans were keen not to have the label of the American flu so Spain was neutral during the First World War so it was reporting cases of Spanish contracting this virus freely so America, Great Britain and France perhaps looked at Spain and said, ‘we going to give it that label, the Spanish flu.’”
Dr Allen says social distancing is the way to go.
“So a place like Philadelphia for example was very keen to welcome home the troops after the First World War, but inadvertently by having this parade where thousands and thousands of people were in close proximity, within six weeks of that happening, more than 14 000 people lost their lives. So that’s an example that if we go back to normality and some sense of normal life where we go back to our cinemas, concerts, restaurants; there could be a concern that we get a second and maybe a third wave of this.”
Dr Allen also believes the world will survive COVID-19 and move forward, just like it did with the Spanish Flu.
