1918 Pandemic and Covid-19 Parallels

 1918 Pandemic  Infection Dates
Australia   First known infections October 1918.
                 Second more severe in July 1919

Sri Lanka   First Wave in June 1918
                  Second Wave Sept 1918

Just based on pandemic incidence getting lagged, would guesstimate that Aus second wave will be in July 2021.   In Sri Lanka guesstimate the pandemic should be over by February.

Some Excerpts from (National Museum of Australia)

In Australia, while the estimated death toll of 15,000 people was still high, it was less than a quarter of the country’s 62,000 death toll from the First World War. Australia’s death rate of 2.7 per 1000 of population was one of the lowest recorded of any country during the pandemic.

Nevertheless, up to 40 per cent of the population were infected, and some Aboriginal communities recorded a mortality rate of 50 per cent.

Excerpts Ceylon Today Article 

Note: This newspaper article gives mortality rate as 1.1% from the Langford paper.  The more recent Sarathchandra gives mortality at 3 to 5%.

A notable victim of the 1918-1919 pandemic in India was Mahatma Gandhi. But he recovered by going on an all-liquid diet and complete rest. There was no medicine for the flu. By early July in 1918, 230 people were dying of the disease every day in India.

 While COVID-19 has apparently spared women, the 1918-19 flu hit the women hard both in Ceylon and India.   

Districts in the Dry Zone (such as Anuradhapura) suffered more than those in the Wet Zone (because of Malaria and weak health).

In the South, the plantation sector suffered a lot because of the congested living conditions, the unhealthy environment in the "Line Rooms" where the tea workers lived, and the poor health of the estate workers who were poor labourers from impoverished South India.  

In the short term, and in the worst months, the Indian origin Tamils bore the brunt of the pandemic. The Muslims were next in line, and the Sinhalese were third. This position of the Sinhalese may well have reflected the fact that their habitations were much more scattered while other communities tended to live in close proximity.

However, over a longer 15- month period, ethnic differences in morbidity disappeared, the researchers noted. (In SL as of Dec 5th 50% of the dead (124) are Muslims).

Ceylon Today Newspaper Article
https://ceylontoday.lk/news/india-and-sri-lanka-hit-by-a-pandemic-a-century-ago

Chandra and Sarathchandra (2014)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/irv.12238

Langford and Storey (1992)
https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/handle/1885/41148

Australia National Museum
https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/influenza-pandemic