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Contrary to what some public figures have suggested, there is no equivalency between the coronavirus pandemic in the United States and its resulting deaths, versus deaths from automobile accidents and from the influenza (the flu).
Comparing a new phenomenon with automobile technology and an annual disease that have been around for a hundred years or more is misleading. As a historian of technology, science, and medicine I can assert that it is wrong to suggest that somehow we should regard the coronavirus pandemic death toll as the normal result of human endeavor.
Certainly the number of deaths from automobile accidents and the number of deaths from the annual influenza are deplorable and more could be done to minimize mortality each case. But careful consideration of history shows that in those cases many innovative actions have been taken, while so far we have only been able to apply traditional methods, such as quarantine and social distancing, to control the coronavirus.
Automobile-related deaths
Let's take automobiles first. From the beginning of the automobile age around 1900 to the present, we have learned an enormous about automobiles and have taken many actions to control deaths caused by them.
Examples abound. The early use of traffic lights, posted speed restrictions, and marking highways for passing zones and no-passing zones were effective in reducing accidents. In more recent decades, seat belts, airbags, and other safety features in automobiles have reduced accident tolls even as speeds have increased and there are more automobiles on the road.
While today fatal accidents continue to be caused by people ignoring speed restrictions, drinking while driving, or not using seat belts, what we have learned over a 120 years has made automobile travel safer per mile.
Influenza
In regard to the influenza, great strides have been made through scientific medicine and public health since the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918-19. Although viruses as a disease entity were known to medical science two decades earlier, even at that time a virus was not identified as the cause of a global epidemic.
Since then, a great deal has been learned about viruses and their disease-causing functions, and not until mid-century was the epidemic potential of viruses clear. For many years, we have had an annual flu vaccine based upon the active strains of the flu viruses. Several therapeutics are available to help people resist infections and get healthier sooner. The DNA revolution has allowed also has allowed the sequencing of viruses so that researchers can try to target the weakest part of the viruses structure.
COVID-19
This brings us back to COVID-19, which has been identified as a known disease for less than a year. It took decades to better understand and cope with automobiles and viruses as threats to human life. If history is our guide, we cannot expect human ingenuity to have a cure or a therapeutic for COVID-19 without developing far more knowledge of it. Until there is extensive research and testing of therapeutics and vaccines, over at least months and more likely over years, the best we can do is use consistently the time-honored strategies of quarantine, social distancing, and medical interventions used for many infections.
In the meantime, we will have deaths unchecked by specific knowledge of the disease, unlike the checks that we have for automobiles and for the known strains of influenza. We are engaged in a battle against a new human foe, and in the coming weeks and months we may be able to develop more effective strategies to control the disease. But significant control, and God-willing, eradication of it are likely to take years of knowledge-building.
Editor’s Note: Darwin H. Stapleton, Ph.D., has studied the history of public health and disease for forty years. His publications have appeared in scholarly books and journals in the United States, Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Italy, Portugal and Singapore. He is the uncle of Publisher Allan J. Bassler.
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