History of Medicine

As the possibility of a major coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. turns to reality, I figured it would be useful to do more research into the history and evolution of the family of viruses that coronavirus belongs to— influenza. One of the oldest diseases in mankind’s history dating back 2400 years, the flu is caused by the influenza virus, which was isolated only in the 1930s after the  1918 Spanish flu, the  biggest flu pandemic in history. This pandemic killed over half a million people in the United States and around 50 million (some estimates are as high as 100 million) worldwide. The Spanish flu had a mortality rate between 2-20% and it lowered the average life expectancy of the American population by more than 12 years. Compared to that flu outbreak, the current coronavirus pandemic pales in significance, surely thanks to our current knowledge of epidemiology and the proactive measures taken by governments to curb the spread of the virus, rather than any change in the lethal nature