By Eunice Masunungure
COVID-19 began in city of Wuhan in China in late December 2019 and has spread around the globe with horrific death statistics, creating panic and disrupting social and economic structures globally.
This is not a unique situation since there have always been cyclic outbreaks of diseases from time immemorial.
Pandemics have been recorded before and state of preparedness and humane approach called upon as former US President Barack Obama warned Americans about preparing for a global pandemic back in 2014:
“The funding we are asking for is needed to help us partner with other countries to prevent and deal with future outbreaks and threats before they become epidemics.
We were lucky with H1N1 that it did not prove to be more deadly.
We cannot say we are lucky with Ebola because obviously its having a devastating effect in West Africa but it is not airborne in its transmission.
There may and likely will come a time in which we have likely both an airborne disease that is deadly.
And in order for us to deal with that effectively, we have to put in place an infrastructure – not just here at home but globally – that allows us to see it quickly, isolate it quickly, respond to it quickly.
So that if and when a new strain of flu like the Spanish Flu, crops up five years from now, or a decade from now, we’ve made an investment and we are further along to be able to catch it.
It is a smart investment for us to make.”
Pandemics are cyclic in nature as former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi argued in his address to the UN in 2009 during the world body’s 64th General Assembly in New York:
“Perhaps tomorrow there will be fish flu, because sometimes we produce viruses by controlling them.
It is a commercial business.
Capitalist companies produce viruses so that they can generate and sell vaccinations.
This is very shameful and poor ethics.
Vaccinations and medicine should not be sold.”
According to Nicholas Le Pan (March 2020): “Diseases and illnesses (are mortal flaws which have) plagued humanity since the earliest days.”
Scientists concur that a pandemic is a widespread occurrence of infectious disease in excess beyond regions and borders.
Examples are smallpox, tuberculosis, black death, 1918 influenza (Spanish Flu), 2009 influenza pandemic (H1N1) as well as HIV and AIDS.
Owen Jarus says, in All About History: “Plagues and epidemics have ravaged humanity throughout its existence, often changing the course of history.”
Pandemics increased due to increase in human and animal interactions since the shift from Nomadic to Agrarian communities.
Increased connections, contact of humans, animals and ecosystems as people moved into atomised cities as necessitated by industrialisation, also created conducive environments for pandemics.
Amon Munyenyiwa et al. (2019), in Plague in Zimbabwe From 1974 to 2018; A Review Article argues: “Man to rodent contact, cultivation, hunting, cattle herding, handling of infected materials, camping in forests and anthropic invasion of new areas…” may cause plagues that result in epidemics and there is need for “…continuous monitoring and awareness programmes in plague prone areas.”
Pandemics stretch back to the Antonine Plague of smallpox or measles, which killed five million people between 165AD and 180 AD.
Plague of Cyprian, between 250 AD and 270 AD also had alarming records of daily death toll of around 5 000 people in Rome alone.
According to a Cyprian, Caius Novatian (1885), who wrote in a work called De Mortalitate in Fathers of The Third Century: Hippolytus, translated by Philip Schaff, archaeologists found a mass burial site in Luxor in 2014: bodies were covered in lime used as disinfectant and some plague victims were burned in a giant bonfire.
In 430 BC, not longer after a war between Athens and Sparta began, an epidemic destroyed lives in Athens and lasted for five years.
Estimates put the death toll at 100 000 people.
Scientists argue that the disease could be Ebola and typhoid caused by overcrowding due to war since Athenians hid behind long walls called fortifications.
Japanese Smallpox of 735AD to 737AD, believed to have been caused by variola major virus also killed one million people.
There is also the Plague of Justinian of 541AD to 542AD which was caused by yersinia pestis bacteria or rats and fleas cost 30-50 million lives.
The plague is named after the Byzantine Emperor Justinian who reigned from 527AD to 565AD .
The plague spread like wildfire across Europe, Asia, North Africa and Arabia, killing an estimated 30-50 million people.
According to Thomas Mockaitis, a history Professor at the De Paul University: “People had no real understanding of how to fight it other than trying to avoid sick people.”
The Black Death pandemic also claimed 200 million lives and was caused by yersinia pestis bacteria that is not common these days.
The disease was said to have emerged from rats and fleas on infected rodents between 1346 and 1351.
The Black Death pandemic destroyed lives from Asia to Europe.
The Centre for Disaster Management records that Black Death resurfaced roughly every 20 years from year 1348 to year 1665 to amount to 20 outbreaks in 300 years.
The Black Death plague changed the course of Europe’s history since with so many dead, most of whom were slaves, labour became harder to find, necessitating pay rise to attract labourers.
There is also the Great Plague of London (1665) which claimed 100 000 lives.
It is believed to have been caused by yersinia pestis bacteria from rats and fleas.
The Italian Plague also killed one million people between 1629 and 1631 and it is believed to have also come from yersinia pestis bacteria.
A death toll of 12 million Chinese and Indians from Third Plague believed to have emerged from yersinia pestis bacteria also ravaged in 1885.
New World Small Pox outbreak caused by variola virus also claimed about 56 million lives since year 1520.
All these examples evidence that infectious disease outbreaks are not anything new.
Cocoliztli epidemic caused by salmonella, known as s.paratyphic virus causing hemorrhagic fever, killed 15 million inhabitants of Mexico and Central America between 1545 and 1548.
Another well-known outbreak is the cholera pandemic caused by cholerae bacteria, which, other than recurring variously across the globe, first made a rampaging effect between 1817 and 1923, killing one million.
According to Responding to Cholera Outbreaks in Zimbabwe: Building Resilience Over Time by Anderson Chimusoro et al. (2018): “Cholera, an enteric infection caused by the bacterium vibrio cholerae affected 15 countries in the World Health Organisation (WHO) African Region (AFR) between January 2017 and March 2018.”
These countries are DRC, Angola, Burundi, Chad, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Sudan, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, totalling 2 531 deaths from 180 769 cases.
The history of cholera in Zimbabwe stretches from 1972, with the largest recording of 4 081 in 1999.
Thereafter, outbreaks occurred after every 10 years until 1992.
According to Chimusoro et al., more frequent outbreaks happened in the 1990s.
It is clear that infectious disease outbreak is not new.
Yellow fever is another outbreak that killed between 100 000-150 000 people in the US in the late 1800 and it was caused by the virus spread through mosquitoes.
Moreover, American polio epidemic of 1916, which started in New York City, caused 6 000 deaths.
The disease mainly affected children and left survivors with permanent disabilities.
Polio epidemic occurred until the Salk vaccine was developed in 1954.
As the vaccine became widely available, cases started to decline.
There is also the Russian Flu of 1889-1890 which killed one million people and was believed to be of avian origin and H2N2.
Spanish Flu, H1N1 virus from pigs, registered its deadliest 40-50 million deaths between 1918-1919.
The Asian Flu of 1956-1958, named from the H2N2 virus, is another disease outbreak of influenza that originated in China in 1956 and killed over one million people.
There is also the Hong Kong Flu of 1968 to 1970 named H3N2 virus which killed one million people.
Another pandemic is HIV and AIDS, which made its first appearance in 1981.
It is alleged that the virus that causes HIV and AIDS originated from the chimpanzees.
According to the Centre of Disease Control and Prevention, HIV and AIDS has so far killed between 25-36 million people.
Although WHO uses the term ‘global epidemic’ to describe HIV and AIDS, in the data and statistics, the term pandemic is also used for this disease whose infectious rate is recorded on global scale.
WHO also says in another place a pandemic is a new disease that has spread globally.
There have been antiviral drugs which have helped in boosting the HIV and AIDS patient immunity and lengthen lifespan.
The Swine Flu of 2009-2010 caused by the pigs virus named H1N1 killed
200 000 people.
This 2009 flu pandemic was caused by a new strain of H1N1 that originated in Mexico in the spring of 2009 before spreading to the rest of the world.
In one year, the virus affected over one billion people across the globe and killed between 151 700-575 400 people.
The unusual thing about this flu is that it mostly affected children and young adults unlike most flues whose bad strain is on adults.
The good news is that a vaccine was found for the H1N1 virus.
Pandemics do not end with the availability of a solution for one type of outbreak.
The SARS of 2002-2003 caused by coronavirus believed to have originated from bats and civets killed 770 people.
MERS, believed to be caused by coronavirus from bats and camels, since 2015, has killed about 850 people so far.
What it means is that COVID-19 is not the first disease to be caused by coronavirus, though its origin is still to be verified.
Ebola of 2014-2016, from Ebola virus from wild animals like bats, recorded over 20 000 cases and killed 11 300 people.
The bulk of the cases occurred in Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, the US and Europe.
Another outbreak is the Zika Virus epidemic which broke in 2015 has had strain felt in South and Central America.
The Zika virus is spread through mosquitoes.
Pandemics have been cyclic in ravaging human living but history shows that their sting does not endure forever, which means that COVID-19 is not new and will come to an end.