HALIFAX -- A Maritime historian who studies diseases has found links between the COVID-19 pandemic and a deadly flu from generations past. However, while the number of cases of the current pandemic continues to rise, she says there's reason to find comfort.
Jane Jenkins is a professor at Fredericton's St. Thomas University who teaches about pandemics and public health. She's a historian, who finds more than a few parallels between COVID-19 and the 1918 flu pandemic – right down to wearing a mask.
"In 1918, there were similar debates about whether they were effective or not," says Jenkins of the polarizing use of face masks.
Jenkins says early intervention during the 1918 flu in N.B. prevented more people from dying.
"New Brunswick suffered one of the lowest mortality rates in all of Canada, and I believe it is because of the closure orders, the orders to avoid crowding – what we call today' social distancing,'" says Jenkins. "They did it quickly, and they held those closure orders for five weeks."
Around the world, 50-million people died from the 1918 flu, which Jenkins notes fell out public memory fairly quickly. Other pandemics followed, but none compared to the magnitude of the 1918 flu.
"People kind of sighed a sighed a sigh of relief and went back to being a bit complacent," says Jenkins, who says that could change as the world awaits a COVID-19 vaccine – which health officials say will usher in a return to normalcy.
"I suspect there will be an uptake of interest in vaccines after this," says Jenkins "I think there's been a lot of respect in general for public health officials and public health initiatives."
Meanwhile, only history will tell; but Jerkins is now living through a life-changing pandemic that she'd only read about – until now.
