ST. LOUIS, MO (KMOX) - When we ask how the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic will end, we can look back at how the biggest pandemic came to a conclusion.
It was the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 to 100 million people around the globe. Dr. Jeremy Greene is a professor of medical history at Johns Hopkins University. He says "how did the Spanish Flu pandemic end?" may not even be the right question. "Maybe the question is, ended for whom?" says Green.
Dr. Greene notes a pandemic is an epidemic that happens everywhere, while it winded down in some places, it lingered in others. That could also happen this time around with SARS-CoV-2. "When we ask the question of how epidemics end, it's really very rare that epidemics end simply with disappearing from the world or consciously eradicated. Oftentimes they slip out of the sight of the mainstream press in places like the United States and become somebody else's problem."
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He points to polio as an example of how a disease ended -- or didn't. "People are still dying of polio, there are still polio epidemics taking place, but they're taking place in Africa and in South Asia. And most Americans when they think of polio they think of polio as something in history, they think of back then."
So, while SARS-CoV-2 is unlikely to be an ongoing global problem, it will likely continue to be a regional issue for some time to come. As for lessons re-learned from a century ago? "The use of face masks. The concept of there being public gathering bans, socially enforced distancing in the name of public health. I think these were some of the more powerful legacies of the 1918 pandemic.
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But he also says the Spanish Flu wasn't quite like what we're experiencing now. Dr. Greene says coronavirus is different, partly because there are so many people with it who show no symptoms. That wasn't the case with Spanish Flu. "It was also on a population level somewhat easier to manage perhaps in that you knew it when you saw it, and you could put into place controls."
So declaring a pandemic over when people who are just fine are still transmitting it makes it a hard call to make. Bottom line; there is no checkered flag at the end to say, the panemic is over.
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