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Is The Coronavirus Pandemic About To Become Another Spanish Flu

February 27, 2020

Is The Coronavirus Pandemic About To Become Another Spanish Flu

COVID-19 vs The Spanish Flu

Summary 

  • In light of the recent outbreak in Europe, it appears a question of when –rather than whether– the COVID-19 epidemic will be declared a global pandemic
  • Countermeasures such as quarantine or travel bans remain necessary to contain the virus’ spread. This will continue to cause disruption, as policy makers chase a moving target
  • There is an increasing interest in the 1918-19 Spanish flu, and there are indeed some similarities in terms of virulence, infectiousness, and the potential attack rate.
  • Anecdotal evidence suggests a similar economic impact both despite and because of changes in society.
  • The key lesson from COVID-19 is the same as with the financial sector: complex interconnected systems greatly increase underlying risks, which are multiplicative and exponential, rather than additive and linear.

Chasing a moving target

Since the middle of January, the number-one worry for businesses, policy makers and market participants has been the outbreak of a new coronavirus known as COVID-19. In an effort to gauge its potential impact, analysts initially resorted to comparisons with the outbreak of SARS and MERS, two previous diseases resulting from coronaviruses. But we are now already way past this. It appears a question of when –rather than whether– this epidemic will be declared a global pandemic.

This is why there has been an increase in interest in previous pandemics. In particular, we have noticed a lot of comparisons with the ‘Spanish flu’, which originated in the final year of the First World War, spread rapidly, and resulted in an estimated 50-100 million deaths worldwide. So far, COVID-19 has led to more than 80,000 illnesses and 2,700 deaths, predominantly in China’s Hubei province, but more recently also in places such as South Korea, Iran, and Italy.

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