Comparing the Spanish flu and COVID‐19 pandemics: Lessons to carry forward

Abstract

Just as people living in the early 1900s experienced the horrors of World War I followed by the Spanish influenza epidemic, those of us surviving the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic will have our lives forever changed. Both pandemics defied the capabilities of prevailing healthcare and public health. Since there was no known cure in either pandemic, much depended on nurses to fight the battle against the viruses.History has shown pandemics are occurring more frequently and are unpredictable in timing and severity. Therefore, we need to place focus on the valuable lessons from the century's two pandemics to prepare for future global disease outbreaks. Lessons that will benefit nursing are the importance of continual preparation and planning, care coordination across communities and healthcare systems, and ensuring nurses have the necessary resources and training to perform their roles in an effective and safe manner.comparing pandemics, COVID-19 pandemic, pandemic lessons, Spanish flu Editor of a nursing publication offered the following comments:As we close our pages, …influenza is rampant in the United States and according to the statements given out …, it has now reached practically every state. Never within the recollection of people living today has there been an epidemic so wide-influenza is rampant in thespread or so disastrous in its results. It has reached people in their own homes not only in the cities and towns, but it has even spread into the rural areas.

Fostering a sustainable pediatric cardiac workforce in the developing world during the current COVID-19 pandemic

“…However, the systems quickly adapted and trained redistributed health workers from other specialties. From this need emerged an answer: developing rapid training for nurses and other healthcare workers to tackle the incoming number of COVID patients (51). As nurses and healthcare workers continued to staff COVID units, efficient training systems evolved to streamline the training process for nurses with little wastage of time between training and working.…”

“…In many parts of the world, nurses were upskilled very quickly to fill the role of ICU nurses to take care of COVID patients. In the same way, cardiac nursing training could be done virtually (51).…”

"Examining the significance of ethics during Covid19: Overview of the proceedings of the 8th National Bioethics Conference, 2020"

“…Pandemic conditions brought new challenges before stakeholders of healthcare research. A central challenge [3] faced by Ethics Committees (EC) was to ensure the voluntariness of informed consent under the remote consent process adopted. The social restrictions of the pandemic posed a unique challenge to designing a simple, understandable and informative, informed consent document in the language of the participant without any room for ambiguity and misunderstanding or misinterpretation.…”

“…Given these transmission and fatality rates, the pandemic has been compared to other major plagues such as the 14th century bubonic plague, which killed more than 25 million people in Europe; and the Spanish flu , which infected 500 million people in less than a year and occurred in three waves (3). Both these epidemics saw the use of quarantine measures, personal protective equipment, and a host of potential remedies (4,5), with limited understanding of causative factors and no effective treatment available.…”

Urgensi Pendekatan Multi dan Inter-disiplin Ilmu dalam Penanggulangan Bencana

“…Pada tahun 2019, dunia juga dikagetkan dengan pandemic Covid-19 yang pada saat artikel ini ditulis telah menginfeksi sekitar 207,784,507 orang dan menyebabkan 4,370,424 orang meninggal dunia (WHO, 2021). Bencana non alam ini meskipun dikatakan masih lebih kecil jumlah korban di banding Spanish Flu yang terjadi pada tahun 1918-1919 (Robinson, 2021), mungkin akan berdampak panjang karena adanya perkembangan varian virus. Sayangnya, menurut para ahli, tidak banyak dokumentasi yang menjelaskan dan merekam penyebaran dan cara penanganan Spanish Flu sehingga kita tidak memiliki lesson learned untuk mengantisipasi dan menangan Covid-19 dengan baik (Feehan & Apostolopoulos, 2021).…”