• GreenShimada@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    To be fair, the 1919 flu was orders of magnitude worse than covid. Literally one of the deadliest pandemics in human history. Covid is far lower in terms of percentage of mortality globally.

    • kyub@discuss.tchncs.de
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      10 days ago

      Probably so, but another thing is much more severe today than it ever was back then: the ease and speed of distributing fascist and/or destabilizing propaganda. X, Youtube, Instagram, Tiktok are full of it, and guess where most people hang out on and get their “news” from.

      • GreenShimada@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        You had WWI and troops with horses, which were carriers. Sort of an apples and oranges factor, but it’s not like the 1919 flu was happening in a vacuum.

    • barkingspiders@infosec.pub
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      8 days ago

      I’d be curious how much of a difference the vaccine made. Like if we hadn’t had a vaccine would the death rates have been more similar?

      One major difference I think I’ve read is that the Spanish flu was more likely to kill younger people whereas COVID hit our elderly population much harder.

      • GreenShimada@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        100% agreed, but also the ages affected were, in both cases, biased towards greater fatalities. Boomers are still around, and were both old enough to be disproportionately affected, and disproportionately more of the population than an average demographics curve. In 1919, younger people would have been a larger part of the population as lfe expectancy would have been lower.