if something like COVID or especially omicron had happened some centuries ago,
would they have decribed it as influenza ?
Remembering all the old books that we had studied here in 2006-2008
and their desciptions of the history of influenza.
It looks somehow unlikely that Corona epidemics had never been observed before.
Translation Google
Did a coronavirus pandemic take place 130 years ago?
The "Russian" flu that claimed a million lives at the end of the 19th century has long been attributed to the influenza virus. But there are signs that a coronavirus is the cause, experts say.
Mathieu Gobeil
March 7, 2021
“I don't think I've ever felt so weak, not even after having malaria in Genoa,” wrote English feminist and social reformer Josephine Butler in a January 1892 letter to her son. She attributes her symptoms of inflamed lungs and her conjunctivitis to the Russian flu which she allegedly contracted the previous Christmas.
Three months later, she still hasn't recovered. I am so weak that if I write or read for half an hour, I feel very tired as if I was going to faint, and I have to lie down , she confides to an acquaintance.
The disease causes thousands of his compatriots with fever, cough, pain and respiratory problems. But also neurological and fatigue symptoms that are reminiscent of those of COVID-19, researchers now believe.
British historian Mark Honigsbaum
identified symptoms which are described in the 1890s about this pandemic: neuralgia, neuritis, post-influenza numbness , inertia , psychosis, anxiety and paranoia, among others. Some doctors of the time also believe that they are not dealing with the flu.
Like a straw fire
This pandemic originated in the steppes of the Russian Empire, during the year 1889, possibly in Uzbekistan. The virus spread very quickly along the railways, in full expansion at the time in Russia and Europe.
The city of Saint-Petersburg was seriously affected in the fall of 1889. Then the epidemic quickly moved towards Sweden, and then Western Europe , relates the professor of demography at the University of Montreal Alain Gagnon who studies historical epidemics and pandemics.
“ It is spreading like wildfire. »
— A quote from Alain Gagnon, professor of demography at the University of Montreal
In Paris, deaths reached peaks of more than 400 dead on certain days in the winter of 1889-90. A similar scenario is unfolding in London and other European capitals. Several crowned heads and political leaders fell ill. Queen Victoria's grandson will die of it.
In addition to the railway, the development of fast connections by boat contributes to the rapid spread of the virus, relates Professor Gagnon. The first cases in North America were already recorded at the end of December 1889. In Canada, the port of Halifax was the first affected. In Montreal, Quebec City, Toronto and several other cities, cases increase in January and there is an increase in mortality. In subsequent years, the disease returns in waves, sometimes more deadly than the first.
It was the first epidemic that was, let's say, tracked. Public health agencies were in their infancy in the late 1800s , recalls the demographer.
We therefore have government data as well as reports from caregivers and newspaper articles.
"It was also a time when there was a great debate as to whether these epidemics were caused by "miasmas" (emanations from sewers, for example) and particular atmospheric conditions, or by transmissible infectious agents. between people" , microbiology being then in its infancy, explains Alain Gagnon.
There were therefore no measures taken such as physical distancing or the wearing of a mask, which would be introduced in 1918-19 during the Spanish flu, thanks to a better knowledge of the transmission of viruses. This influenza pandemic at the end of the First World War was nevertheless much more deadly, with its 50 to 100 million victims .
From animal to human
However, work published in 2005 by a
Belgian team perhaps shed new light on the events of 1889-90. By sequencing the genome of the OC43 coronavirus – one of four benign coronaviruses that circulate widely today and cause colds – researchers have managed to estimate that it passed from cattle to humans around 1890.
Last year, a
Danish team reported results similar to those of the Belgian team, also dating the emergence of OC43 from the bovine coronavirus BCoV to around 1890, work that has yet to be published in a scientific journal.
Taking this information into account, and the fact that the 1889-90 disease was more severe in men than in women and appeared to affect the nervous system, much like COVID-19, scientists have suggested that this pandemic could be caused by the OC43 coronavirus.
"We know that at the time there was a massive slaughter of cattle herds because of a bacterial disease (not attributable to a coronavirus). This could have increased contact between the workers and the livestock and they could have contracted the coronavirus which was possibly circulating in the animal" , explains Burtram Fielding, professor of molecular biology at the University of the Western Cape, in South Africa, and coronavirus expert.
"Why are so many neurological symptoms reported at the time? It is known that for the three deadly coronaviruses, those of SARS in 2003, MERS in 2012 and that of COVID-19, there is a greater incidence of neurological manifestations. And coronaviruses are known to cause neurological symptoms in animals" , Professor Fielding explains.
Despite everything, the attribution of the 1889-90 pandemic to a coronavirus remains a hypothesis.
"The genetic arguments supporting the hypothesis of a coronavirus are quite convincing" , judge Alain Gagnon. But as for the descriptions of symptoms from the time, they do not make it possible to distinguish a flu from an illness similar to COVID-19, he notes.
First, in the late 19th century, it was common to associate physical symptoms with mental problems, such as nervous states and anxiety, which had to do with "nerves" , as it was understood in the era.
In addition, during the Spanish flu, underlines the demographer,
certain neurological symptoms were also reported. or cardiovascular and patients dragged out sequelae for months, as in the case of COVID-19.
Also, children were not spared by the pandemic of 1889-90, recalls Alain Gagnon, just like during the Spanish flu and other influenza pandemics.
Finally, serological studies on immunity suggest that people born before 1889
were partly protected from the 1968 pandemic (the Hong Kong flu), which points to exposure to a similar strain of influenza in both cases.
"We can still raise the hypothesis that the coronavirus and the flu virus could have appeared at the same time or circulated in the population towards the end of the 1890s" , advances Alain Gagnon.
It is very difficult to prove or disprove the coronavirus hypothesis. But at the same time, it's very difficult to prove or disprove the flu hypothesis , admits Burtram Fielding.
"The only way to find out would be to isolate the virus and sequence it, as was done for the Spanish flu virus" , adds Mr. Gagnon.
Indeed, researchers in the late 1990s recovered Spanish flu virus RNA fragments in Alaska from a body preserved in permafrost. They also harvested fragments from tissue taken from American flu victims in 1918-19 and then stored. This made it possible, in the 2000s ,
reconstruct the genetic code of this AH1N1 virus.
But as for the Russian flu, we have to go back 28 years before the Spanish flu. And there were far fewer deaths. So, you would really have to be lucky [to find preserved remains that would allow you to do the same], but that would be the hammer argument , says Professor Gagnon.
Review the toll of mild coronaviruses
With the outbreaks of SARS, MERS and COVID-19 in recent years, scientists are
revisiting the coronavirus family. According to Burtram Fielding, it is worth looking into the supposedly mild coronaviruses that cause the common cold, both to understand historical episodes, but also to better envisage the future in the pandemic we are living through.
"Viruses like OC43 today may be causing far more deaths around the world than we realize. It is known that such viruses can be problematic in some children, for example those who are immunosuppressed. It's just that we haven't collected data on their wider impact" , says the South African researcher. An American group is working precisely to measure the extent of the mortality of these benign coronaviruses, he mentions.
For example, in 2003, when an outbreak occurred in a residence for the elderly in British Columbia, everything suggested that SARS-CoV was the culprit. And for good reason: this deadly coronavirus at the time caused a health crisis in Canada and in several countries. Eight residents die of the 95 infected. But tests later show that
this outbreak was due to OC43, this supposedly benign coronavirus.
"The death rate was approaching 10%" , reports Mr. Fielding. It can therefore turn out, in certain circumstances, to be more deadly than one might think, he continues.
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https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle...histoire-covid
