11 ways the novel coronavirus pandemic is eerily similar to the 1918 influenza outbreak

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• In 1918, social distancing measures like school shutdowns and travel restrictions were put into place in order to avoid spreading the Spanish flu, one of the deadliest events in history.
• In 2020, over 100 years later, we are following the same social distancing measures to mitigate the effects of COVID-19.
• From hourly workers panicking about lost wages to a cultural obsession with face masks, historians told Insider that both pandemics have a lot in common.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Closing stores, shutting down schools, wearing masks, and self-quarantining. In 1918, these were the social distancing methods used to mitigate the effects of the Spanish flu pandemic, and they're the same methods being used to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus more than 100 years later.

Global pandemics tend to occur every 30 to 40 years, but experts have been warning for years that the world isn't prepared for the next one. In fact, some say the world today is about as well-prepared for an outbreak as people were in 1918.

"What we're hearing now, in terms of washing your hands or stay home if you're sick, are almost the same measures that were recommended in 1918," said Tom Ewing, history professor at Virginia Tech.

"When you don't have a vaccine, and when you don't have a treatment, you don't have the medical countermeasures," said medical anthropologist Monica Schoch-Spana, currently a Senior Scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. "So you have very little left in your toolkit."

That's hardly the only similarity historians are seeing.

In many American cities in 1918, retail hours were cut short, public transportation was limited, and essential services including mail delivery, garbage pickup, courts, and grave digging were interrupted. Schools, universities, dance halls, pool rooms, and theaters closed. Parades and social club gatherings were cancelled. American life ground to a virtual halt, and influenza became one of the deadliest events in history, killing an estimated 50-100 million people.

Historians told Insider there are many similarities between the events of 1918, which many public health experts often examine as the worst case scenario for a pandemic, and the events of 2020, from the hourly workers concerned about losing wages to the cultural obsession with masks.

Source and Original Article:>>> msn.com and Insider