Pandemic of the 21st Century

 

The second wave of the pandemic that is sweeping through India, causing untold suffering to the people makes one to wonder what this pandemic is after all. Is it a once in a century event? Or is it new, peculiar only to our 21^st century? What do we do when it strikes us? How do we manage it? These questions and more drove me to read some material on it, especially two books, “The Age of Pandemics 1817-1920” by Chinmay Tumbe and “The Great Influenza,” by John Barry. Both the books touch another horrible pandemic that swept the globe much like our present pandemic, popularly known as “Spanish flu,” though it had nothing to do with Spain.

So what is a pandemic? When a disease, say for example, malaria suddenly affects many members of a community at the same time, it is called an epidemic. When that happens periodically and is localized it is considered endemic to that region. But when such an epidemic spreads across a wide geographical area, involving countries and continents, it becomes a pandemic. In north India it is called mahamaari, maari commonly referring to an epidemic; maha being big one.

In the ancient world and the middle ages, there had been at least two great outbreaks of pandemics. The plague! It ravaged at least some parts of the world once in 6^th century and again in the 14^th century. The first plague pandemic occurred during the reign of Justinian 1, the Roman Emperor of Byzantine around 540-550 AD. It originated in Egypt and spread through Alexandria to Palestine and to Constantinople, Byzantium. Then it travelled to Italy, Spain and up to British Isles. It was transmitted through rats-rat flea-human beings via flea bites. Only in 1894 it was discovered that plague was caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. People died literally like fleas, thousands of people dying on a single day. This depopulation and economic devastation so weakened the Empire it was not able to stand up to Persian invasion that followed soon. The pandemic is learnt to have killed around 10 percent of the world population, the figures being higher in Europe to around 25 to 50 percent even. Its impact on Asia was marginal.

The second plague returned with a vengeance in the fourteenth century, between 1346 and 1353 AD and it devastated whole populations in Europe, Northern Africa, Western Asia, popularly known as the “Black Death.” Again mortality rates were high in Europe, where whole population was wiped off. It originated in Crimea in 1346 and reached Constantinople, then via Mediterranean reached Spain, France, British Isles, Germany, and Scandinavia. It came in waves, and reached Russia in 1353. It is said to have killed up to 50 million people, with 35 to 60 % in Europe and the Mediterranean world and 10 to 20 % of the world population that time. Though Europe was devastated, the healthy population soon rose and Renaissance, Protestant Reformation as well as anti-Semitism, all followed soon and sanitation improved in those countries.

Small Pox was introduced into the New World from Europe, the Americas after 1492, decimating the local populations like Incas, Mexicans and native Americans. Edward Jenner perfected the smallpox vaccine in 1790s and the disease was controlled and finally eradicated from the world. It is of interest to know that Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses V died of smallpox! Cholera outbreak, a water-borne disease, started from 1817, having originated from India and moved over to the other parts of the world, Western Europe, Americas, Russia and Egypt. Charles Dickens’s son died out of this plague around 1850s in London. Around 20 million people died worldwide by 1920. Discovery of ORT-Oral Dehydration Therapy brought down its severity. Improved sanitation and availability of pure and uncontaminated drinking water reduced the mortality considerably. An influenza plague started in China in 1894 arrived in Bombay in 1896 via ships and killed almost 13 million people in the world, 12 million in India alone, which tapered off around 1920.  

In 1918 the world saw influenza pandemic that was much more global than the above pandemics. It lasted only for 2 years but wiped out over 40 million people. In India alone 20 million people died of this flu pandemic. Over 2% of world’s population was wiped off. It was the deadliest of all the pandemics so far. It originated in Kansas, American Midwest in 1918 and coincided with the movements of large number of soldiers recruited to fight in the World War I, which America joined towards the end. From the soldiers in the cantonment area it passed on to the civilian population. In contrast to today’s Corona virus flu the American flu killed adults aged between 20 and 40, but very young and the elderly were not touched. Within two months it will finish off in one American city and then move on to the next. From May 1918 to October 1919, it killed some 8,00,000 people in America.

Spreading outward, it killed 2 million people in Iran; spread to India, Kenya, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Mexico, Philippians, Russia, Portugal, and Spain. Though death rate was not high in Spain, because it was a neutral country during the WW I and without censorship, press openly wrote about it that it got the name Spanish flu. In India it affected mostly the rural areas where not much medical facility was available. It killed Maharaja of Bagelkhand, Venkat Raman Singh. A severe drought in 1918 had already left the people of India malnourished and the flu caused great suffering and death among them. In Europe the flu claimed the life of German sociologist Max Webber in 1920 in Munich. Crown prince of Siam died of flu in June 1920. Another notable person to die of flu was Frederick Trump, paternal grandfather of Ex-President of America, Trump. The then President of America Woodrow Wilson contracted the flu in April 1920 in Paris in the midst of negotiating peace terms at the end of WW I. He was paralyzed later and died in 1930.

The 1918 flu affected the upper respiratory tract of the lungs, killing a person within 4-5 days, sometimes within a day; it spread through the population like fire; hospitals had no adequate beds to accommodate the sick; doctors and nurses who served the patients started to die; drugs were in short supply; the dead were piled up in the morgues and corridors of the hospitals; then in the houses, as there was no other place to store them; trucks picked the bodies and as even digging individual burial places became a strain, the bodies were buried in mass graves. As importance was given to the war, the news about the flu pandemic was suppressed and not given out. During this flu pandemic, scientists thought that a bacterium caused the influenza. But decades later it will be learnt that it was caused by a virus and it was separated only in 1930. Thereafter the scientists were able to develop a vaccine by 1945 to counter the virus. It took years, almost two decades and more to develop the vaccine.

Hundred years later we encountered another viral influenza pandemic. Covid-19, the China flu, which originated in Wuhan in China, was a repeat of the 1918 flu. On 30^th December 2019 a young doctor in Wuhan Dr. Li Wenliang warned about the serious nature of this flu which resembled SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). He was silenced by the authorities and he died as a victim of the same disease on 7 February 2020. WHO named the flu as COVID-19, or corona virus disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. On 11 March 2020 WHO termed it as a pandemic. By that time it was too late and it had spread all over the world. The rest is history. Though in China itself it was stamped out by rigorous quarantine and lockdowns, in the West it ravaged. This was only the first wave. This time it affected mainly the elderly and not the youth or the young children. Then by October/December, 2020 it came as the second wave in Europe, America and England, more virulent than the first wave. The virus has mutated and had become more virulent strains in UK, South Africa and Brazil and continued to spread.

The first wave came to India by March 2020 and in the start itself the government unnecessarily shut the whole country in lockdown for 21 days, ruining the economy and making millions of migrant workers from the less developed states like Bihar and Utter Pradesh jobless and homeless; thousands started to walk home 1000s of kilometres away, as the lockdown was sudden with no arrangements for them to return home. Many died on the way. Economy shrank by 23%. The second wave came to India by February middle via England and caught us napping. By April it has caused havoc among Indians, especially in Maharashtra, Delhi, and UP and Karnataka in the south. The leaders of the country prematurely congratulated themselves that India has overcome the virus, and went ahead with election rallies and Kumbmela, when the virus incubated and burst the seams April 20^th onwards. As the government lulled the people into believing that the worst was over, people also relaxed without using mask and congregating for all sorts of purposes. The political leaders and officials relaxed and made no effort to improve the health infrastructure to face the onslaught when it would come. And today people are dying without oxygen, without drugs and even without hospital beds for the sick. Though a vaccine has been invented and India has the capacity to produce large quantities of this vaccine, being the so-called ‘factory of the world’ in pharmaceuticals, the country is facing shortage of vaccines to vaccinate her people. She was not prepared to face the emergency.   

The second wave in India was really a man-made disaster. It could have been handled efficiently if only the leaders had some humility and forethought. Had they cared about the people and not so much of winning the elections and pandering to the religious sentiments of some of the communities, it would not have boiled up to this state now.

When this pandemic hit the world, people had no memory of the 1918 flu pandemic. Science had not developed much then. So they struggled. People died. But in the 21^st century with the development of science and technology we need not have suffered so much. Vaccine was developed within a year; it took more than 25 years to develop the vaccine for the Spanish flu. The death rate and the absolute numbers are much less compared to the Spanish flu; still it could have been managed better if only the political leaders led their countries in the right path. That was not to be.

Why does the Lord permit such pandemics at all? Is it to remind humankind of our own limitations and instil in us humility and fear of God? Many had returned to the Lord during this pandemic confessing their sins, due to fear of death and fear of going to hell. Or is it that the end of the world – apocalyptic way of interpreting such events? But this is not the first time a pandemic has come, nor will it be the last time. It came in 5^th century, then in 14^th century, then in 19^th and 20^th centuries; now again in 21^st century. How do we face such emergent situations? The fear of God induced by a pandemic, won’t it disappear once the pandemic goes away? Then what is the point? Isn’t it like a sizzling cracker without fire!

We need to be god-fearing in our everyday life and lead a life as if, either our Lord Jesus Christ is returning to earth immediately or we may die before that. Either way we need to live as if it is tomorrow. Then we will be prepared when the actual ending of the world as per the time designated by God the Father happens. Till such time let’s live in the joy of the Lord, being confident that He is still on the throne.