A Covid-19 type pandemic that occurred in the 1950s?

Let's say an infection spreads from China like IOTL how is the world impacted if this occurs in the mid 1950s however? This would be a world where white collar workers wouldn't be able to work from him like they did/do in our time due to the lack of technology at the time. How would this impact the Cold War?
 
They'd handle it the way they did the 1957 flu pandemic, probably even down to mistaking it for flu. They'd realize it was something else years later.
 
It would get more reaction than the 1957 flu. It was estimated to have caused a little over 1 million excess deaths or the equivalent of 3 million adjusted for the global population. Covid's excess deaths by comparison are estimated at 12-22 million by the Economist. Covid has a lower death rate and affects older demographics than Spanish Flu, but it is far worse than any flu since then. They would figure out it was different from the flu, Covid manifests somewhat differently (loss of taste/smell among others), very early in the pandemic doctors in Wuhan were talking about how they were having weird pneumonia cases. There would probably be less reaction than during the current pandemic, but there would still be one. There will be many of the same measures of masks and lockdowns, they were used in 1919 and 2020, and would also be used in the mid-1950s. Looking up the Spanish Flu strategies would probably be useful, both because there would have been some of the same societal limitations such as no computers, and also because there would have still been a decent number of people alive who remembered the Spanish Flu. I know in 1919-20 school by mail was done in a lot of places.

I do think there would be better public compliance in the western world since social trust was generally higher. There would be much less resistance to mandatory vaccines, but it would take longer to have a vaccine. I think they could figure out something, flu vaccines were a few decades old, after all, but it will take more than a year.
 
Last edited:
If it started in China, it would probably spread much more slowly than COVID-19 IOTL. In addition to generally slower travel times, mainland China was pretty much cut off from the West by the Cold War.
 
They may be heavily criticized, but are probably in broad range. Official toll is 5 million and that is a very substantial undercount. Peru now counts excess deaths instead of official and the reason why is they were off by a factor of nearly 3. Excess deaths even in a developed country like the US are a third higher than official. In developing countries it is far worse. I did my own rough estimates months ago for each country based on available reports of excess deaths. I often had to extrapolate from regional samples the ratio of caught to actual deaths. In Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, excess deaths were 60!!! times official Covid deaths and it is hard to imagine that ratio was better in the rural areas. Africa may have somewhat lower death rates than other areas, for one thing a very young population, but what data is available suggests they have a good bit of Covid mortality, just no one is measuring it. In some cases I had to estimate from neighboring countries. My estimate for global excess deaths actually ended up at the high end of the Economist's range, though obviously there is a lot of uncertainty.

Economist is very off with China's data. We would have known if it was that bad. China does have lots of problems with questionable demographic data, though more bottom up fudging for political or economic gain than top down (i.e. Beijing probably doesn't have trustworthy data to work with either) so I doubt the official numbers, but that also makes excess death calculations problematic. India is a big uncertainty, but based on excess death data in some provinces and cities, 10X seems reasonable, which I think is the rough ballpark of Economist's estimate. Also weekly mortality several times normal in a lot of places in India. India is slow in processing demographic data so it will be several years before we have much hard nation-wide data. Besides the data we have, a sniff test makes it clear that India's numbers are a huge underestimate. The horrors of last spring do not even vaguely match up to an official per-capita death rate lower than Denmark's! One place where the Economist is probably underestimating the death toll is in Sub-Saharan Africa. They have to be conservative in their estimates because there is no excess death data for much of Africa. Since they are a serious organization, they have to hedge their bets instead of relying quite as much on extrapolation as I did.
 
Last edited:
How the Economist's model works causes high end estimates for China that are unlikely to be true. India is a big uncertainty, but based on excess death data in some provinces and cities, 10X seems reasonable, which I think is the rough ballpark of Economist's estimate. Also weekly mortality several times normal in a lot of places in India. India is slow in processing demographic data so it will be several years before we have much hard nation-wide data. Besides the data we have, a sniff test makes it clear that India's numbers are a huge underestimate. The horrors of last spring do not even vaguely match up to an official per-capita death rate lower than Denmark's! One place where the Economist is probably underestimating the death toll is in Sub-Saharan Africa. They have to be conservative in their estimates because there is no excess death data for much of Africa. Since they are a serious organization, they have to hedge their bets instead of relying quite as much on extrapolation as I did.

Ive seen claims that as large as 50% of deaths in India are not recorded. Thats all deaths. Things like Death Certificates issued by doctors or Coroners are not universal in India, which leads to a large data hole. Even if the lack of record is just 20% it represents a large data distortion. This same thing occurs in SubSaharan Africa & to a lesser extent other regions. Even in the US or European nations there are a few unknown thousands of annual deaths unrecorded among fringe groups.
 
I do think there would be better public compliance in the western world since social trust was generally higher. There would be much less resistance to mandatory vaccines, but it would take longer to have a vaccine. I think they could figure out something, flu vaccines were a few decades old, after all, but it will take more than a year.

Clearly, & very possibly a better functioning public health system. In 1960 the Indiana schools had medically qualified employees who could handle routine testing of the students for TB & screen the students for other communicable disease. We had annual TB test of all students & complaints or resistance was near unknown.
 
Yeah, we will never have a very good idea what the death toll was in Sub-Saharan Africa and India other than that it is far off the official numbers. We'll get somewhat better estimates with time, but it will be one of those things that academics get into blood feuds with each other.
 
COVID-57 would be a nasty SOB. If gas masks filtered small enough then you might see heavy use of gas masks among medical personnel but as with COVID, plenty of medical personnel due off from high viral exposures.

The biggest difference is that if you translate the numbers now to then, anyone who went to the ICU or even came close in 2020 or 2021 is dead here, and fairly quickly. Anyone who is or was hospitalized nowadays is an ICU patient in the biggest cities and dead in rural or poor areas. So you’re looking at 5-10% lethality in the elderly of diagnosed cases (in comparison to the high number of undiagnosed due to testing or mild versions).

Dead coronavirus vaccines are probably possible to supply some limited immunity but it’s an ugly ugly mess that would be every bit as traumatic as the Spanish flu was, and in memory of many people who faced that flu as a child.

It would be speculatively interesting in the awful sense what the consequences of COVID-19 would be on a population in the era of Peak Smoking, with a tobacco industry actively promoting itself as a healthy activity and covering up any health consequences.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, we will never have a very good idea what the death toll was in Sub-Saharan Africa and India other than that it is far off the official numbers. We'll get somewhat better estimates with time, but it will be one of those things that academics get into blood feuds with each other.

& the ideology of the India governments is likely to lead to denial for some time ahead.
 
COVID-57 would be a nasty SOB. If gas masks filtered small enough then you might see heavy use of gas masks among medical personnel but as with COVID, plenty of medical personnel due off from high viral exposures.

Activated charcoal filters common in gas masks ere not very effective against viruses according to the Bio weapon training I had. Among other things the filters are only good for a day or two of continuous use.

Dead coronavirus vaccines are probably possible to supply some limited immunity but it’s an ugly ugly mess that would be every bit as traumatic as the Spanish flu was, and in memory of many people who faced that flu as a child.

Actually adults too. A 20 year old in 1919 would be only age 58 in 1957.
 
Most of the people who are super vulnerable to COVID (diabetes, heart disease, advanced age, etc) would already be dead of their preexisting conditions in the 50s, so I doubt it would be seen as such an issue.
 
Covid coming a decade after ww2? If there are restrictions it will be the same as every country had in ww2. The politicians in charge in mid 50s were high officials in their country in 1939-45 for the most part. I mean, if covid strikes before 1955 Curchill is PM in Britain.

There is also not that much tourism around the world. First swedish charter to Mallorca was in 1955. In 1956 10,000 Swedes travled on charter trips compares to 2,1 million in 2007. There is less travel east to west becauce of the iron curtain. Air travel was in its infancy. So that makes the spread less than 2019-20.
 
Most of the people who are super vulnerable to COVID (diabetes, heart disease, advanced age, etc) would already be dead of their preexisting conditions in the 50s, so I doubt it would be seen as such an issue.
The 50s just changes the dynamics, todays super-unhealthy and vulnerable 75 year olds are that era’s frail 60-65 year olds and a lot of chronic conditions that are now quite manageable are crippling by the time many are in their 40s-50s.

Life expectancy up to age 60-65 is primarily based on reducing infant and child mortality up to age 5 plus hygienic practices and basic care for childbirth. Then it’s medical advances that push the expectancy higher for your average person.

For a place like the US, the positive of far less obesity would likely be offset by the truly insane cigarette consumption plus all the other chronic health conditions. The other factor would be far less to no ability to cut transmission via remote or individualized work and the situation is closer to grocery workers and those in meat packing plants for a far larger segment of the population.

My bet is that original-version COVID death rates would be a somewhat higher in younger populations mostly due to factory conditions and high viral loads. The death rates would be moved back about 10 years for each age group, so:

Under 20, still minimal
20-40, maybe .1-.25% depending on the type of work with some percentage getting debilitating long COVI
40-50, maybe 1-2%, 5% with one of the risk factors (a little worse than OTL’s 50-60)
50-60, 5% with high risk factors being closer to 10-15% (closer to 70+)
60-70, 10-15%, with high risk factors being closer to 20%+
70-80, 15-30% depending on conditions
80+, a doozy of a killer

It would absolutely ravage the Baby Boomer generation’s grandparents and sear itself into young minds.

I think it’d end up being ghastlier than the Spanish flu and not just based on raw numbers but percentages too.
 
Top