The end of the pandemic is coming - just don't set a date for the party [View all]

[dalton99a]

https://theconversation.com/the-end-of-the-pandemic-is-coming-just-dont-set-a-date-for-the-party-157205

The end of the pandemic is coming – just don’t set a date for the party
March 31, 2021 8.31am EDT
Agnes Arnold-Forster

“After the pandemic is over” must be one of the most frequently uttered phrases of 2021. I am certainly guilty of this kind of optimism, longing for the day when I can get on a plane, have dinner with my friends, and cuddle all the new babies I know who have been born under the restrictive eye of COVID-19.

The misleadingly named Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 was the deadliest in history. It infected around 500 million people worldwide and killed anywhere from 20 million to 50 million. Much like today, citizens were subjected to social restrictions and ordered to wear masks. The pandemic abated, but identifying its precise end is almost impossible.

Subsequent waves of the virus ripped through European and North American cities for years after the pandemic’s supposed end. As late as 1925, and in the space of nine days, 201 people in Chicago died from what the newspapers called a “highly contagious influenza epidemic”. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that there is little evidence in the historical record of parties to commemorate the end of the terrible virus.

Historians of medicine know that pandemics and epidemics are social phenomena. As a result, their endings happen in two ways. There is the medical conclusion of a pandemic, when disease incidence goes down and death rates plummet. But there is also the social end, when fear of the infection decreases and social restrictions ease.

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