In: Biology
How are the Spanish Flu and COVID-19 similar and how are they different? (4-5 sentences for each side)
The whole world is currently battling with a global pandemic
situations of SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes
COVID-19.
Whole world has faced several major pandemics diseases over the
last 100 years, one of the worst was the 1918 influenza pandemic,
so-called Spanish flu. It was caused by an H1N1 virus that
originated in birds. It was named Spanish flu because the first
confirmed case was from here.
Simmalarties -
First simmalarity os that both are pandemic and the death rate is
so high.
Spanish flu infected 500 million people worldwide, which at the
time was about a third of the Earth’s population. More than 50
million people died of the disease and COVID-19 is affecting 210
countries and territories the global fatality rate for COVID-19 is
1:65 lakhs and so on .
Another common in between the Spanish flu’s H1N1 and the COVID-19
coronavirus is that both are considered “novel,” which is to say,
they are so new nobody in either era had any immunity to
them.
Another one there were no vaccines for the Spanish flu and there
are currently no vaccines for COVID-19.
Both covid19 and spanish flu follow respiratry tract pathway.
Differences
First one is simply is that COVID-19 is not influenza, it is more like a chronic acute pneumonia. They are both caused by novel viruses, but different types of viruses with different methods of action and infectiousness.
At the time of the Spanish flu, people didn’t know the influenza pathogen, and without this knowledge, it wasn’t possible for them to create a vaccine. They knew they were dealing with a flu and that it was contagious, but they weren’t able to see the viruses because they were too small.