Don’t let fear blind us to the realities of the pandemic

Past events provide us with some valuable perspective

Following advice from the health officer, the city of Calgary has made the wearing of masks on its transit system mandatory, both for passengers and motormen.

OK, I slipped you a clue, with that motormen reference.

Because this isn’t a recent order involving either Alberta’s current top doctor Deena Hinshaw or Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi.

It’s a snippet from the Calgary Herald of October 24, 1918; part of a yarn announcing another 22 citizens had come down with a recent, strange illness — one that would become infamous as Spanish flu.

Oh, but the mandatory wearing of masks on streetcars was just the start. “All clerks in the stores and in fact anyone who comes into contact with the public must now wear them,” announced the city more than a century ago.

The good news was only two citizens had died of this flu and things were stabilizing. Sadly, citizens didn’t know the Spanish flu would eventually claim the lives of about 380 Calgarians, while killing 50 million worldwide.

Did those mandatory masks work? Who knows? Maybe more might have died if masks weren’t compulsory. The same goes for closing schools, while shuttering dance halls and other popular gathering spots in 1918. Those measures sounds familiar, don’t they?

But mandating mask wearing didn’t stop the Spanish flu. It returned with a vengeance the following year and killed many more. Then it left. There was no vaccine. It simply burned itself out. Yet even when developing specific vaccines became possible, doing so during a fresh pandemic — and subsequently distributing vaccines to citizens in adequate time to prove effective — has proven a Herculean task.

There were none deemed ready during the Asian flu of 1957, the Hong Kong flu of 1968, the SARS epidemic of 2002 or MERS in 2012.

Still, usually after about 18 months, those viruses were gone. Science didn’t stop them. Nature itself did.

Which brings us to COVID 19: looking back might prove more informative than current attempts to look into the future.

Heck, four months ago, we were told perhaps 3,000 Albertans would die in this pandemic — that’s what medical modelling suggested. As of Tuesday, the toll was 157.

Three months ago the World Health Organization declared wearing masks would induce a false sense of security, so advised against it. Then the WHO changed its collective mind — masks are now cool.

So today, we’re not yet through the first round of this epidemic and we’re already being cowed with second-wave warnings. Mandated masks are our salvation, according to some doctors. Well, they didn’t keep Calgary’s death toll at only two, back in late October 1918.

Politicians, with on-tap-experts by their sides, are terrified of uttering the words “I don’t know.” Therefore, they instinctively double down on earlier warnings.

But the past provides clues. Indeed, we need not go back centuries or decades to find some suitable perspective. Two years will do.

The 2018 flu season was a nasty one in Alberta. Even though 40 per cent of citizens were vaccinated, the flu still raced through the province. OK, it didn’t have COVID’S advance billing so media interest wasn’t piqued, therefore you might not know it even happened. These are Alberta Health Services’ provincial numbers for that flu season: 9,069 confirmed cases, 3,053 hospitalizations, 242 ICU admissions and 92 deaths, with most fatalities being those over 80.

Compare the same organization’s COVID numbers as of Tuesday: 8,436 cases, 393 hospitalizations, 78 ICU admissions and 157 deaths, with the vast majority of deceased over 80.

Make your own mind up. Should we have closed down the economy, shuttered schools, churches, restaurants, and curtailed funerals and weddings, while urging folk to stay home and six feet apart? Maybe. After all, we didn’t know what we were dealing with. Better safe than sorry isn’t a poor choice and hindsight’s always 20/20.

But now we do know. Be cautious, but don’t be scared. Time to put fear back into its nasty little bottle.

Chris Nelson is a Calgary writer.