Alabama seems to learn from past epidemics as COVID-19 numbers continue to grow

The state of Alabama continues to resume as the number of cases of COVID-19 continues to grow. Mobile phones, which currently have the most cases in the state, and Montgomery are watching the increase in numbers. This is not the first pandemic to hit Yellowhammer. The response is similar to the 1918 outbreak of influenza in Spain and the outbreak of mobile yellow fever.

Dr. John Higginbotham is Vice President of Research at the University of Alabama. Before looking into history, he wants to define what a pandemic is.

“A pandemic is a geographically widespread epidemic, usually declared by the WHO, the World Health Organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, to do it, and defined when they did it long before at COVID. Will be-19″, he said.

Many expect the 1918 Spanish Cold Pandemic, one of the last major pandemics to hit the United States. Higginbotham said there are many similarities.

“The 1918 flu was a disease of the crowd, like COVID-19, so it really started to spread as people approached,” he said.

Currently, healthcare providers and policy makers are still learning about COVID-19 and how it evolves. But they’re not the only ones to say anything about the coronavirus and how it resembles the 1918 Spanish cold pandemic. Jim Baguette is one of them.

“The local government has closed, closed theaters, churches, closed schools. Here in Birmingham, we’ve closed places like soft drink parlors that are likely to be infected,” he said. It was

Baguette is an archivist at the Birmingham Public Library. During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, more than 145,000 people were infected and nearly 5,500 died. It’s also a respiratory illness, and Baguette says it was a rough method.

“Your lungs shut down, were filled with liquid, and you drowned. Explained that those who survived have lost their sense of time all the time, and some have healed for weeks and some, He died within a few days.”

He said the Spanish flu was difficult to predict where the next surge of events would occur. What the frontline workers are finding at COVID-19.

“Of course, there were many cases in cities, with four cases reported in Shelby County in the beginning of October 1918, but 200 cases reported in a small town in Pell City in St. Clair County. But I couldn’t predict it, that way,” he said.

I also directly touch on what the 1918 flu was like. Edna Register Boon was 10 years old when a pandemic attacked Alabama. In 2008, she conducted an interview that was part of the Alabama State Archives collection. Boone explained what she had to do.

“Mom puts a gauze bandage on my face, she always keeps jars of sterilized fruit on the stove, she fills them with soup, I’m a family suffering from those jars I took her to her house,” she said.

She remembered how many people in a small community were unsuccessful.

“They were buried in a common grave because they were buried in clothes they died and wrapped in sheets,” she said. “I don’t remember the burial of a single church.”

Boone said he had sacrificed her as a child.

“I often just got in and cry because of all the illness around me, and I knew the illness was deadly,” she said.

Baguget says that many of the precautions we take today, such as the masks Boone was wearing, were less appropriate in 1918.

“As with today, I was advised to stay at home as much as possible, be advised to wear a mask, understand how the disease spreads, and let someone who has an infection, cough or sneeze I knew I could get infected, “he said.

Churches today often hold meetings by promoting social media, zoom, or services. They also had the version at that time.

“One of what they called “Sunday without a church,” Birmingham News turned over two pages of the Sunday edition and preached. That Sunday, the pastors would have delivered to their congregation,” Baguette said.

Following health guidelines seemed to help people like Boone and her family to succeed in it through the Spanish cold in 1918. Baguette said it helped bring out some of the best of the people.

“People have come together and may not come together physically, but they took care of their neighbors,” he said. “In rural Alabama, an entire family can get sick. Doctors get sick.”

This does not seem to apply to all past health problems in Alabama. Yellow fever struck the coast several times. Tom McGee is the Museum Director of Bellinglas Garden and Mobile In Home.

“Even if someone gets sick and it has nothing to do with yellow fever, the train is stopped, the person is pushed out of the train, and he or she leaves 30 miles to the nearest town, for himself I will fight,” he said.

Several small groups meet at state capitols across the country to protest some of the health and safety measures being implemented by state governments. McGee said this was no exception in the mobile era of the 1800s.

“In 1853, the President of our Local Health Commission was criticized for establishing quarantine and its impact on the business. McGee also said, “Commerce only brings money, money is ours. It does not make up for the loss of the citizens, and it does not rejuvenate the hearts devastated by death,” he said.

Mosquitoes suffer from yellow fever, killing one-tenth of Mobil’s population in 1853. People often fled the city in brutal ways. Mr McGee said the bishop’s diary at the time had an interesting explanation.

“It is quoted as saying that he said because even panicked social status, education, Christianity could not do anything to overcome the published desires.” So it didn’t matter who they were, so they behaved like gangsters, they went out of there and cheated those who were going out.”

McGehee not only wants to remind everyone of the old saying, but also gives hope.

“As with all history, if history is unknown, then it’s true that we repeat it. We’ve been able to overcome all these epidemics in 200 years and move on, It will follow, but we will survive it,” he said.

Higginbotham said it’s still not 100% certain what COVID-19 is up against, and at the moment it doesn’t seem as vicious as the 1918 flu epidemic.

“The 1918 flu mortality rate is much higher than what we’ve seen here, and the 1918 flu, especially the second and third wave, uses COVID-19. It turned out that people between the ages of 20 and 40 were targeted, with the highest risk being the 65 and older group, who have chronic illnesses, “he said.

There is a theory that COVID-19 may disappear during the summer. Higginbotham said if history has shown us anything, it may not be out of the forest yet.

“The flu of 1918 was seen in three rounds, but it spread over a period of one and a half years over three years. Currently, we see only one movement in the world around the disease. I still don’t know if he will come back,” he said.

There is one thing Baguette wants people to stay away from the lessons of past pandemics.

“I accept the fact that it’s something you have to work on and it will be inconvenient, and for some people, there are times when it’s really very difficult,” he said.