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How is the coronavirus outbreak going to end? Here's how similar epidemics played out.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/02/how-is-coronavirus-outbreak-going-end-heres-how-similar-epidemics-played-out/
By William Wan
March 2, 2020 at 11:24 a.m. EST
<snip>
The new coronavirus spreads so widely, it simply becomes a fact of life.
This is in essence what happened with the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, also called swine flu. It spread quickly, eventually to an estimated 11 to 21 percent of the global population. The WHO declared it a pandemic, and there was widespread fear.
H1N1 turned out to be much milder than initially feared, causing little more than runny noses and coughs in most people. And H1N1 is now so commonplace, it’s simply seen as a part of the seasonal flus that come and go every year among the global population.
Early estimates on the fatality rate for H1N1 were much higher than the roughly 0.01 to 0.03 percent it turned out to be. Still, the CDC estimates that H1N1 killed 12,469 people in the United States during that first-year period from 2009 to 2010, infected 60.8 million cases and caused 274,304 hospitalizations. The true number is hard to ascertain because many who die of flu-related causes aren’t tested to see whether it was H1N1 or another flu strain.
As context, the seasonal flu has killed at least 18,000 people in the United States so far this season, according to the CDC.
One reason H1N1 is a good parallel because while much less fatal than SARS or MERS, it was deadlier in because of how infectious and widespread it turned out to be. And not to be alarmist, but another good parallel might be the 1918 Spanish flu, which had a 2.5 percent fatality rate, eerily close to what’s estimated for the coronavirus. CDC calls Spanish flu “the deadliest pandemic flu virus in human history," because of how it infected roughly one third of the world’s population and killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. Spanish flu, however, differed in that it was deadly to young and old, while coronavirus has proven to be most lethal to the elderly and left young people relatively unscathed.
</snip>
By William Wan
March 2, 2020 at 11:24 a.m. EST
<snip>
The new coronavirus spreads so widely, it simply becomes a fact of life.
This is in essence what happened with the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, also called swine flu. It spread quickly, eventually to an estimated 11 to 21 percent of the global population. The WHO declared it a pandemic, and there was widespread fear.
H1N1 turned out to be much milder than initially feared, causing little more than runny noses and coughs in most people. And H1N1 is now so commonplace, it’s simply seen as a part of the seasonal flus that come and go every year among the global population.
Early estimates on the fatality rate for H1N1 were much higher than the roughly 0.01 to 0.03 percent it turned out to be. Still, the CDC estimates that H1N1 killed 12,469 people in the United States during that first-year period from 2009 to 2010, infected 60.8 million cases and caused 274,304 hospitalizations. The true number is hard to ascertain because many who die of flu-related causes aren’t tested to see whether it was H1N1 or another flu strain.
As context, the seasonal flu has killed at least 18,000 people in the United States so far this season, according to the CDC.
One reason H1N1 is a good parallel because while much less fatal than SARS or MERS, it was deadlier in because of how infectious and widespread it turned out to be. And not to be alarmist, but another good parallel might be the 1918 Spanish flu, which had a 2.5 percent fatality rate, eerily close to what’s estimated for the coronavirus. CDC calls Spanish flu “the deadliest pandemic flu virus in human history," because of how it infected roughly one third of the world’s population and killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide. Spanish flu, however, differed in that it was deadly to young and old, while coronavirus has proven to be most lethal to the elderly and left young people relatively unscathed.
</snip>
12 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
someone SERIOUSLY told me it would be gone as the weather warmed up. 
Do they just stay around or do some of them go dormant, extinct? Is the Spanish Flu still around in some form or another or did it just die out and go away?
