Refusing to Learn from the Last Global Pandemic

By Johnny Denden
HAPI-Northern Mindanao Lead Convener | HAPI Scholar

Recalling history, an unprecedentedly large movement of people occurred during World War I as soldiers and medical personnel came to aid the war in the European Theatre. Coming from North America and the Asian Pacific region, these mass movements helped exacerbate the deadly Spanish Flu or influenza, which was one of the deadliest pathogens ever encountered by mankind.

It was estimated that influenza hit a quarter of the planet’s population during the early-to-mid 1900s, killing as many as 50 million people all over the world. Tragically, that is more people than World War I itself had killed. The exact influenza death toll is unknown due to the lack of medical records kept by countries devastated by the war.

At that time, we were quite serious about getting rid of the killer virus. We were so eager, in fact, that we managed to eliminate it within two years despite the endeavor costing millions of lives. (The first licensed flu vaccine would not arrive until the 1940s, but the influenza pandemic itself came to an end by the summer of 1919.)

Humanity’s greatness shone through: even without internet technology, we managed to come together and eliminated a species-threatening disease.

Today, we face yet another catastrophic pandemic claiming millions of lives across the world. (According to WHO data, 4,752,988 deaths have been registered worldwide as of this writing.)

For nearly two years now, we have collectively battled to end the Coronavirus pandemic, but the lessons we learned from the last time a pandemic visited us seem to have been forgotten.

Here is where the lessons of history must be emphasized. We simply must pay attention to what happened in the past in order to prevent more loss of life.

Now more than ever, it is easier to move and communicate across the globe, but we are abusing that privilege. If we cannot come together in a time when we are more interconnected than we have ever been in our civilization’s history, what does that say about us?