![How did the great epidemics of the 20th and 21st century end?](https://img.passeportsante.net/1000x526/2020-11-13/i97509-.jpeg)
The major epidemics have resulted in a number of restrictions and caused millions of deaths. They eventually died out. But how ?
20th century: Spanish flu and typhus
Between 1918 and 1920, the Spanish flu caused 50 million deaths. In the United States, where it has been most severe, restrictive measures have been put in place such as hand washing, the ban on spitting in the street, the wearing of masks, the closure of schools and religious services. It is ultimately collective immunity that made it possible to stop this epidemic: ” Collective immunity came at the cost of the lives of some people. It is unfortunately this natural selection that allowed the virus to become less virulent. Said journalist Laura Spinney, author of The Great Slayer, how the Spanish flu changed the world.
Typhus turned into an epidemic in the Jewish ghettos in Warsaw during World War II. Transmitted by lice, ticks and fleas, it could cause a high fever or even become fatal. In Russia, 30 and 40 million people have been infected, causing between 3 and 5 million deaths. The disease was contained thanks to ” quarantine when deemed necessary, isolation, good personal hygiene and reorganization of community soups »Explains Dr. Lewi Stone, professor of biomathematics at Tel Aviv University (Israel), but also thanks to public readings and the training of medical students in an underground university, avoiding transmission to more than 100,000 residents from the ghetto and saving thousands of people.
21st century: SARS, H1N1 and Ebola
According to the WHO, SARS (or severe acute respiratory syndrome) affected more than 8,000 people in the early 2000s and killed 774 people around the world. The closure of markets, containment and the end of winter have slowed the epidemic. Then, the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, was transmitted to humans in 2009. As it is transmitted by air, this virus triggered a pandemic and circulated very quickly, causing 18,156 dead in 213 countries according to the WHO. Several factors allowed the extinction of this epidemic: the arrival of spring, collective immunity as well as the vaccine against H1N1.
Finally, Ebola, known as “ the biggest epidemic known to date “According to the Institut Pasteur (before that of Covid-19) causes high fevers and often fatal hemorrhages. This virus has a case fatality rate between 30 to 90%. Discovered in 1976, Ebola has experienced several outbreaks, including “about twenty epidemic outbreaks [qui] appeared in Central Africa ”according to the Institut Pasteur. The various waves have been contained thanks to social distancing. When the WHO announced the end of the epidemic in June 2016, the virus had caused 28,000 contaminations, including more than 11,000 deaths. The next day, a new case was detected in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, relaunching the epidemic because the virus, which is not transmitted through the air, can persist in certain parts of the body such as the eye or the testes. It was finally in August 2018 that a vaccine, called ERVEBO, made it possible to stop the spread of the Ebola virus.