Epidemioista on voinut olla ketjussa aiemmin vertailua. Tämä juttu on julkaistu vieläpä eilen New York Postissa, joten laitan sen siksi esittelyyn.
Mikä on tässä aikakaudessa sellaista, että koronapandemia on saanut (kärjistys) yhteiskunnat pysähtymään ja ennennäkemättömät rajoituslinjaukset kehiin?
(Kysymys on ollut jonkinmuotoisena varmaan kaikkien mielessä, ja sitä on pohdittu ketjussa muistaakseni eri perspektiivistä aiemmin, nyt nimenomaan aikakausien erilaisuudet mietinnässä justjulkaistussa lehtitekstissä. )
Miksi elämä jatkui suunnilleen normaalisti aiemmin, kun on ollut vastaavia epidemioita maailmalla. 1960-70 luvun taitteessa hongkongilainen influenssa tappoi miljoona- 4 miljoonaa ihmistä globaalisti (eri lähteet). Suomessa siihen kuoli runsaat 1000 ihmistä. Yhteiskunnat eivät pysähtyneet, hongkongilainen influenssa ei ollut otsikoissa joka päivä.
Amerikkalaisessa New York Postin artikkelissa pohditaan syitä " Why American life went on as normal during the killer pandemic of 1969 " :een. Miksi elämä jatkui silloin normityyliin.
Kirjoittaja poimii jutussa syiksi mm. sukupolvien erilaisuuden, internetin ja median muuttumisen, suhtautumisen epidemioihin ja kuolemaan (aiemmin enemmän hyväksyttiin, tuliko edes mieliin täyskontrollia tavoittavat valtiojohtoiset linjaukset?), yhteiskunnallisten ajankuvien erilaisuuden (60-70-luvun taitteeessa oli kuuhun matkaamista, kansalaisoikeusliikkeiden nousemista, seksuaalista vapautumista, isoja murroksia, epidemia ei yltänyt niiden tasolle).
Tekstissä mainitaan myös, kuinka nykyinen tilanne voidaan nähdä suurena yhteiskunnallisena kokeiluna.
Ohessa alkuperäisen tekstin osioita. Yllä yhteenvetoa suomeksi.
.. H3N2 (or the “Hong Kong flu,” as it was more popularly known) was an influenza strain that the New York Times described as “one of the worst in the nation’s history.” The first case of H3N2, which evolved from the H2N2 influenza strain that caused the 1957 pandemic, was reported in mid-July 1968 in Hong Kong. By September, it had infected Marines returning to the States from the Vietnam War. By mid-December, the Hong Kong flu had arrived in all fifty states.
But schools were not shut down nationwide, other than a few dozen because of too many sick teachers. Face masks weren’t required or even common. Though Woodstock was not held during the peak months of the H3N2 pandemic (the first wave ended by early March 1969, and it didn’t flare up again until November of that year), the festival went ahead when the virus was still active and had no known cure.
“Life continued as normal,” said Jeffrey Tucker, the editorial director for the American Institute for Economic Research. “But as with now, no one knew for certain how deadly [the pandemic] would turn out to be. Regardless, people went on with their lives.”
Which, he said, isn’t all that surprising. “That generation approached viruses with calm, rationality and intelligence,” he said. “We left disease mitigation to medical professionals, individuals and families, rather than politics, politicians and government.”
While it’s way too soon to compare the numbers, H3N2 has so far proved deadlier than COVID-19. Between 1968 and 1970, the Hong Kong flu killed between an estimated one and four million, according to the CDC and Encyclopaedia Britannica, with US deaths exceeding 100,000. As of this writing, COVID-19 has killed more than 295,000 globally and around 83,000 in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University. But by all projections, the coronavirus will surpass H3N2’s body count even with a global shutdown.
Aside from the different reactions to H3N2 and COVID-19, the similarities between them are striking. Both viruses spread quickly and cause upper respiratory symptoms including fever, cough and shortness of breath. They infect mostly adults over 65 or those with underlying medical conditions, but could strike people of any age.
..
How does this compare to the Hong Kong flu? Nathaniel Moir, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, said there were few precautions taken during the H3N2 pandemic other than washing hands and staying home when sick.
“It was like the pandemic hadn’t even happened if you look for it in history books,” he said. “I am still shocked at how differently people addressed — or maybe even ignored it — in 1968 compared to 2020.”
The virus rarely made front-page news. A 1968 story in the Associated Press warned that deaths caused by the Hong Kong flu “more than doubled across the nation in the third week of December.” But the story was buried on page 24. The New York Post didn’t publish any stories about the pandemic in 1968, and in 1969, coverage was mostly minor, like reports of newly married couples delaying honeymoons because of the virus and the Yonkers police force calling in sick with the Hong Kong flu during wage negotiations.
A vaccine was soon developed — in August 1969, not long after Woodstock — but the news of a cure didn’t get much media attention either.
It may seem like the world responded to the 1968 pandemic with a shrug of indifference, but the different approaches may be down to a generational divide, said Poling. In 1968, “we were confident with all the advances in medicine. Measles, mumps, chickenpox, scarlet fever and polio all had been brought under control,” he said.
.. Much of our current thinking about infectious diseases in the modern era changed because of the SARS outbreak of 2003, which “scared the hell out of many people,” said Poling. “It’s the first time I recall people wearing masks and trying to distance themselves from others, particularly in situations where someone might cough or sneeze.”
The idea that a pandemic could be controlled with social distancing and public lockdowns is a relatively new one, said Tucker. It was first suggested in a 2006 study by New Mexico scientist Robert J. Glass, who got the idea from his 14-year-old daughter’s science project.
“Two government doctors, not even epidemiologists” — Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher, who worked for the Bush administration — “hatched the idea [of using government-enforced social distancing] and hoped to try it out on the next virus.” We are in effect, Tucker said, part of a grand social experiment.
But the differences between how the world responded to two pandemics, separated by 50 years, is more complicated than any single explanation.
....
https://nypost.com/2020/05/16/why-life- ... c-of-1969/
No, enpä tiedä, onko tämä nyt niin herättelevää. Ihmiskunta kokeilee eri ratkaisumalleja, ei siis toista kaikkea samoin kuin aiemmin. Voidaan se niinkin nähdä. Nyt eletään mielenkiintoista aikaa. Vaikka tämä koronakausi olisi tulevaisuudesta katsottuna vähän väärin linjattua, niin se on silti ennennäkemätöntä kautta historiassa ja ollaan kenties hyvinkin murrosajan kynnyksellä kuten hippikaudella tuolloin 50 vuotta sitten.
Mihin tästä mennään. Toivottavasti ei enää avaruuteen; mikä pysyttäisikään ihmislajin/viruksen leviämästä muualle. Toivottavasti ei siis mennä enää minnekään maapallolta.