Britain’s wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously observed that “the further you look into the past, the further you can see into the future.” This advice has proved useful for predicting the long-term societal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
History tells us that every pandemic and epidemic has brought health benefits as well as losses in its wake. Pandemics have ravaged human civilizations throughout history, but global health crises have also sparked progress in culture and society, changing lives for the better.
The 1918 global flu pandemic killed 20 to 50 million people worldwide - more people than died in World War One - but it also resulted in greatly improved patient care. The flu pandemic led to the first uses of non-pharmaceutical interventions such as track and trace, isolation, and social distancing – techniques we’ve recently been forced to reintroduce. As a direct result of the global flu, Russia, France, Germany and the U.K., among others, for the first time, put centralised healthcare systems in place, while the United States adopted employer-based insurance plans. Both systems vastly expanded access to healthcare for the general population in the years following that particular pandemic.
Water and sanitation systems were also improved, and pandemic experiences led to innovations in limiting disease spread, as well as in treatments and vaccines.
