What if coronavirus had occurred in the mid of 19th century?
- Thread starter Luciano7477
- Start date
I believe it could be very fatal, as there were no measures of social isolation at the time, and there was not enough advanced medicine to be able to help the most serious cases or to account for the number of infected people.
It could be the thing that tips the Qing over the edge in the 1860s or so if it takes out the right people, and I could easily see it destabilising British India as well.
Would not be known. Before it spreads out of China it would take such long time that it would fully adapt to human environment (it spread to humans mere months before spreading over whole world, that would be impossible in mid 19th century with China being isolated) and would behave like other coronaviruses-it would be no worse than seasonal cold.
It would've gone mostly unnoticed and probably mistaken for the flu, tuberculosis, or a host of other respiratory illnesses. Kills a few notable people alongside maybe 2 million others globally. It's pretty much just another epidemic and treated little differently than 1890 Russian flu.
As we see now, it would only be lethal to the elderly (of which there were far fewer) and people with pre-existing illnesses (like tuberculosis). It would cause some level of disruption like any bad flu pandemic but overall I'd be surprised if it had a particularly high death toll.
Even the literal plague with far higher death rates barely did that in either country, let alone a disease like COVID-19 that kills maybe 1% of those infected (with pre-modern medicine maybe a bit higher like the "Russian flu" of 1890).
This is the key point, it would be hitting a very different world demographically and while the death rate for the elderly would pick up for a year or two in a noticeable way it wouldn't affect that many people.
This. People back then would hardly be impressed by such death rate, especially considering the fact, that COVID generally spares children. My great-grandmother had 7 sisters and two brothers, only great-grandmother and two of her sisters survived childhood and great-grandmother in addition outlived 5 of her 6 children. I don't think that such people would be shocked by COVID pandemy as much as we are in 21th century.
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BEEG
Banned
We had a similar thread about Covid in the 80s:
Most of the things applicable for that period are multiplied here:
-Even less old people
-The media is less engaging - paper based
-People are more used to death
-Medical care is way worse
A nice thing that might come out of it would be the practice of better hand hygiene, we just need someone to convince a royal household with old monarch to wash their hands often, using nice soaps and smelly colognes with alcohol. The nobility and wanna be nobility will pick it up...followed up by the middle classes and the poor - think buttoning up the lowest button on your blazer.
Covid-88
One of the few pieces of good luck about this entire crisis is that we can do things as normally as we can because we have online services now. But imagine if it was 30+ years ago. Even as recently as 2015, I doubt that kids could be educated online. There's no working from home without IP...
www.alternatehistory.com
-Even less old people
-The media is less engaging - paper based
-People are more used to death
-Medical care is way worse
A nice thing that might come out of it would be the practice of better hand hygiene, we just need someone to convince a royal household with old monarch to wash their hands often, using nice soaps and smelly colognes with alcohol. The nobility and wanna be nobility will pick it up...followed up by the middle classes and the poor - think buttoning up the lowest button on your blazer.
Kaushlendra pratap singh
Banned
European supremacy will be ended due to devastation which will follow into the coastal city of Europe, people here say it will be only affected elder but forget there will be many other diseases which with corona/flu will be become a reason for death - Comorbidity. it can spread with a partnership with Bubonic plague which will confuse orthodox physician .
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How? A disease which strikes down the elderly and those already infirm like TB patients (today you have people who are immunosuppressed like younger cancer patients, those with HIV, etc. as an equivalent) is not going to produce a major death toll. Again, severe flu pandemics occurred every few decades in the 19th century of which the best documented is the 1890 Russian flu. Your 19th century physician will recognise this as a respiratory illness and suggest contemporary treatments. Bubonic plague is a totally separate illness which has no link with coronaviruses so I don't see why it's related (other than you don't want to have both illnesses at once). Even the worst effect of a COVID-19-esque disease, the lengthy illness, isn't too bad compared to other survivable (yet awful) 19th century illnesses.
I'd love to see the research on coronavirus pandemics throughout history since I'd assume that with SARS and MERS and now COVID-19 there have long been pandemic coronaviruses (likely originating as zoonoses) that caused some level of death and chaos yet because of the low death toll (especially in younger people, since even in the elderly COVID-19 is most likely to kill those who already have heart disease or other ailments) failed to attract much notice and eventually evolved into generic common cold viruses.
It's competing with cholera,smallpox,tuberculosis,yellow fever,malaria,sleeping death,leprosy and innumerable other deadly pandemics all considerably deadlier and more fatal. People in the 19th century'd barely take notice of something with a relatively minor mortality rate. It was only in the 20th century and after WW1 at that that most deadly pandemics were brought under control through vaccinations and education.
Are you saying that epidemics do not have the ability or have brought low entire realms? Assyrian resurgence in the very late Bronze Age was most likely blunted and stopped by some sort of mysterious plague mentioned in the annals. Surely, realms can be bested by illness, especially if said illness affects the ability of the rural from engaging in agriculture.
BEEG
Banned
I just found this article:
edition.cnn.com
If true - the lack of ventilators won't be a game changer.
About a quarter of Covid-19 patients put on ventilators in New York's largest health system died, study finds | CNN
About a quarter of coronavirus patients who needed ventilators to help them breathe died within the first few weeks of treatment, a study of New York's largest health system showed.
edition.cnn.com
If true - the lack of ventilators won't be a game changer.
Coronavirus is barely a blip compared to the actual scourges they dealt with on a daily basis back then. You think anyone would notice a dieiease that kills, at most, 2% of the people who get it (mostly old) when you have smallpox, cholera and yellow fever running around in every major city?
Yeah. In 1847 or so famine and cholera killed one third people in my area.
No, I'm saying that a disease with minimal death toll (as COVID-19 seems to be) would have minimal effect aside from being yet another unfortunate epidemic. The only truly novel thing about COVID-19 is the contagion factor, yet most people infected have mild symptoms (if that). Even among those who verifiably have COVID-19 they only suffer a pretty bad illness for 1-2 weeks or so. To 21st century society's it's horrifying, yet there's lots of awful survivable illnesses of older times that did the same. Something like the third plague pandemic is far more likely to destabilise societies than a disease with far lower death toll.
It is disruptive, but comparable to influenza or many other epidemic diseases. And like those diseases, the worst effect of a COVID-19-esque coronavirus ("COVID-1850") would be felt amongst hunter-gatherer peoples from American Indians to Australian Aboriginals who unlike agriculturalists have a lot less flexibility in their seasonal rounds. While such a disease might not be too lethal (although indigenous peoples would likely be hit harder than Euroamericans), when an entire band is ill and can't hunt or gather they suffer malnutrition and become vulnerable to all sorts of illnesses.
This could have a huge impact on the Plains Indians since IIRC in the late 1850s there was a major drought and the Comanche (among others) were reported as "reduced to starvation" since the bison numbers were so low. If the Comanche are ill and can't even hunt then that makes things even worse. They and other Plains Indians would be more receptive to American "aid" earlier (although they'd still opportunistically take it, much to the annoyance of the United States). Perhaps there wouldn't be a resurgence of the Comanche during and after the Civil War. It could be that the Indian Wars after 1865 are less fierce and result in quicker government victories.