Panic is slowly taking over the world as the balance of the coronavirus epidemic in China worsens.
People remembered that 100 years ago, in 1920, the world was facing the Spanish flu pandemic, which began in 1918.
What is even stranger is that in 1820 the world was battling a cholera epidemic, which decimated Asia. Coincidentally, in 1720, the bubonic plague epidemic in Europe destroyed the population of the French city of Marseille.
Every 100 years there is an epidemic, and the number of victims is increasing.
1720: The Great Plague of Marseille kills 50,000 people in the city and another 50,000 in neighboring provinces.
1820: The balance of cholera that hit Asia and reached Europe could never be established. We can only get an idea of the high mortality of the epidemic if we take into account that 30,000 people died in Bangkok alone.
1920: The Spanish flu was a hard-to-imagine disaster – 500 million infected worldwide. Death estimates range from 50 to 100 million people.
The mortality rate of the 1918-1919 pandemic is not precisely known, but it is estimated that approximately 20-50% of the population on Earth at that time suffered from this disease, the lethality being between 2.5-5%, with variations from one country to another. The flu could kill 25 million in the first 25 weeks; In comparison, AIDS killed 25 million in the first 25 years.
17 million people died in India, about 5% of the population at the time, reaching a mortality rate of 20% in some areas. In the Indian army, at least 22% of the soldiers who fell ill died. In the United States, almost 28% of the population suffered from the flu and 500-675 thousand died. 200,000 died in Britain; in France over 400,000. Entire communities have died in Alaska and South Africa. In Australia, 10,000 people died and in Fiji, 14% of the population died in just two weeks, and 22% in Western Samoa.
Spain was one of the most affected countries, with 8 million infected and about 300,000 dead.
It is too early to say what awaits us from the current epidemic, but the prospects are frightening. According to experts, the mortality rate for coronavirus infection is 15%, much higher than other similar infections, with a mortality of only 3%.
Equally serious is the fact that Chinese specialists have announced that the disease can be transmitted from the incubation period, long before the carrier shows signs of disease. This possibility makes all control measures taken around the world unnecessary. Airport checks are useless if a coronavirus passenger is perfectly healthy, without fever, without even sneezing. It is very possible that these people will walk a week or two through any city in the world, spreading the coronavirus left and right.
We might think it’s a way to reduce the planet’s population, but we might as well wonder if it’s not obscure forces trying the same thing. More and more people are talking about a biological weapon, a virus that escaped from the laboratory or simply a virus planted discreetly – not coincidentally in China, a country that bothers through its economic power. And the effects are visible, the coronavirus has not only affected the population, but also the Chinese economy.
