OPINION | The big difference between this pandemic and the one that killed 50 million people

(CNN) – The influenza pandemic that swept around the world a century ago had been a year and a half when a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Missouri admitted the following: the effort to combat the disease had been a “dismal failure.”
Nothing had worked. “We must admit that no action taken controlled the course of the pandemic,” Mazyck P. Ravenel told an audience of health workers in October 1919. “It spread with lightning speed, it went where it was told, and it ceased its ravages only when the available material was exhausted. “

As Nancy Bristow wrote in her 2012 book, which cited Ravenel’s assessment, “American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic“, the pandemic that would end the lives of some 50 million people was the “worst health disaster in history.”

For those living through the current covid-19 pandemic, it is no great consolation that the outbreaks of 1918-20 were much worse: the death toll worldwide then was more than 10 times higher than the death count from covid. to date (although the pandemic is far from over).

But we should be reassured by the fact that we have proven tools to fight the new disease, including vaccines. On Monday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave its formal approval to the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine, which had been licensed last year on an emergency basis, and Americans they are starting to get booster shots to prolong immunity to the virus.

Now there is no obstacle to forcing people to get vaccinated, he wrote Jonathan Sackner-Bernstein, a former FDA official. “Not getting vaccinated against COVID-19 would be similar to rejecting a new cutting-edge drug that has been shown to maintain health after a heart attack or to prevent serious complications during cancer treatment,” he noted. “State governments, schools and businesses must enforce vaccination to protect voters, students and employees, as well as the general public, that is, if we want to base public health actions on rigorously examined scientific data. “

Does requiring vaccination violate the Constitution of the United States, as some anti-vaccines have insisted? Not at all, they wrote Marci hamilton and the Dr. Paul Offit. “The Constitution is not a suicide pact that guarantees the right to harm others. The government is free to protect citizens from deadly conditions, especially when the science supporting vaccination is so clear. “

Delta Airlines told its employees that they would have to pay a surcharge on their health insurance of up to $ 200 a month if they refused the vaccine. That’s right, he wrote John Banzhaf III, a pioneer crusader against smoking. “Covid-19 is now an ‘epidemic of the unvaccinated.’

But we, the vaccinated, continue to be unnecessarily exposed to risks, no matter how small, of illness, hospitalization, ‘long covid’ and death. We vaccinates have to wear face masks in many places, like offices and airplanes, where they probably wouldn’t be necessary if the majority of Americans were vaccinated. And those vaccinated, unfortunately, are also forced to bear most of the financial costs so that some can continue to refuse. “

“Let’s stop pampering the minority and hold the unvaccinated accountable for the consequences of their own deadly choices. “

Last weekend, former President Donald Trump publicly endorsed vaccination, only to meet rejection from some of his normally loyal fans, as Nicole Hemmer noted. “Okay. I did. Get your shots,” Trump said at a rally in Alabama. Hemmer observed: “The crowd, which had been cheering for Trump up to that point, suddenly lost their unified joy.

1. A: “I do not trust a vaccine that is not approved by the FDA.”
B: “The FDA just gave full approval to Pfizer’s vaccine.”
2. A: “Sure, like I trust the FDA.”

A portion of the rally attendees began to boo, not at Trump but at him. ‘Not well. No problem. They have their freedoms, “he said, seeming to recalibrate quickly. ‘I just got vaccinated.”

Challenging DeSantis

For school-age children under the age of 12, there is no approved vaccine option yet, and health experts believe that masks are the next best option, but the governors of Florida and Texas are blocking the mandates to wear masks. .

Lucia Báez-Geller He spent 15 years teaching schools in Miami-Dade County, Florida, before joining the school board. She was one of seven members of that board who voted to challenge Governor Ron DeSantis’s order against the mandate to wear face masks in public schools. “Due to the governor’s rhetoric against face masks,” wrote Báez-Geller, she received “a large number of angry messages” accusing her of “breaking the law, ignoring parental rights, being brainwashed by the ‘Big Science’, being a communist and worse, “along with some supportive responses.

1. A: “I will block your mandates in schools because they limit the freedom of children.”
2. B: “Now he’s going after the guards at the crosses …”.

“As elected members of the school board, the health and safety of our students is our primary responsibility. Your health should never become a political or partisan issue, and I hope the Governor will change course and start working with us to protect our students from this dangerous disease. ”On Friday, a Florida judge ruled against the state’s effort to stop mask-wearing mandates.

For more information:

Dean Obeidallah: The death of the conservative radio host by covid should encourage others to end the lies about vaccines

Ben Tinker: My son was lucky to get a pediatric bed in the intensive care unit. Luck shouldn’t be necessary.