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Comment by Merrill | Hacker News Reader

> It is salutary to remember that we do not really understand why the devastating pandemic of 1918-19 was so severe, and that we cannot therefore be confident that our modern medical measures would succeed against a similar future challenge.

From the introduction to the letter in the British Medical Journal published 1979. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1599810/pdf/brm...

This still seems to be the case for Covid-19.

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Could it be that very dangerous viruses emerge more often, but only when they fall on "(very) fertile ground", that they then spread? The WW1-circumstances (a lot of men together on small space and harsh conditions) have contributed a lot, that the "spanish flu" spread, while others did not spread and so never became known to us ?

Here's a study that exactly goes into your question:

https://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/epi/oxford05.pdf

The conclusion of that article is that the basic lessons we learn today, were - in part - learned in 1918...

Back then, researchers had already traced the emergence of outbreaks to an encampment in France where men and animals were living in close quarters and unsanitary conditions.

As to the first part of your question, the answer is that more people encroaching on the animal and wildlife territory while not adhering to basic sanitary practices will increase the chance of new strains appearing and making the jump to humans.

Vox did an excellent video on how this works for Corona: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPpoJGYlW54

Such events do not only happen in China in particular but they can happen virtually anywhere in the world.

Another ongoing pandemic is HIV/AIDS. Well, it is generally accepted that the jump to humans occurred in West-Africa in the 1920's. But it took time and globalization - increasing mobility - before HIV finally spread across the world:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_HIV/AIDS

May be a complete digression but it's much easier for me to believe the virus escaped from Wuhan Virology Institute than made the jump from a fish market.

There's a hypothesis that the Spanish Flu originated in China and was brought to North America with the tens of thousands of Chinese laborers.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanis...

It could also be that cytokine storms were not known in 1979. The source I see on wikipedia is for 1991, but you can read the article if you like. [1]

This is what essentially causes the "W" curve as opposed to Covid-19's "J" curve.

Edit: Also as opposed to normal flu's "V" curve.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_release_syndrome

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