{"id":4,"date":"2020-09-28T11:03:02","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T11:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.archipeddy.com\/master\/?p=4"},"modified":"2020-09-28T11:03:37","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T11:03:37","slug":"how-do-pandemics-usually-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archipeddy.com\/master\/2020\/09\/28\/how-do-pandemics-usually-end\/","title":{"rendered":"How do pandemics usually end?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How do pandemics usually end? And how will this one finish?<\/h1>\n
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ABC Health & Wellbeing<\/a><\/div>\n

\u00a0\/\u00a0<\/span>By\u00a0Tegan Taylor<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Masks were a common sight during the 1918 influenza pandemic, and again now, just over a century later.(State Library Of Queensland)<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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Just over 100 years ago, a new strain of influenza infected a third of the world’s population \u2014 but within just three years, the threat of this deadly flu had all but passed.<\/p>\n

This was a time before modern medical care and even before humans understood what viruses were. So what’s changed since then?<\/p>\n

It’s a\u00a0question plenty of you have asked<\/a>\u00a0in recent months: how do pandemics end? And how will the one we’re currently living through end?<\/p>\n

Three ingredients for a pandemic<\/h2>\n

An infectious agent needs three conditions to cause a pandemic, says virologist Kirsty Short from the University of Queensland:<\/p>\n

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  1. 1.<\/span>It needs to cause disease in humans<\/li>\n
  2. 2.<\/span>It needs to be highly transmissible<\/li>\n
  3. 3.<\/span>We need to have no pre-existing immunity to it<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    “For example, we live with MERS today,” says Dr Short, referring to Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, a coronavirus that is related to the one that causes COVID-19.<\/p>\n

    “It hasn’t caused a pandemic yet because it’s not highly transmissible from person to person.<\/p>\n

    “In contrast, the seasonal coronaviruses that we get, probably at one point were a pandemic, and they’ve just become these seasonal colds that we don’t really care about because we’ve evolved immunity to them.”<\/p>\n