vox--2020-03-09--Want to do something about coronavirus? Here are 5 ideas.

Right now , more than 109,000 people around the world have contracted the novel coronavirus , and more than 3,800 have died .
Meanwhile , much of the world is waiting anxiously , wondering how bad the pandemic threat will get and whether it will affect those they love .
It ’ s easy to feel powerless in a time like this — there ’ s not yet a vaccine or drug for Covid-19 , the disease caused by the new coronavirus .
And Americans are watching their government scramble to implement measures to keep them safe — something it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But while individuals may not be able to halt the spread of coronavirus , there are some steps we can take to help protect the most vulnerable — and to combat some of the social ills exacerbated by the virus , like racism and age discrimination .
From washing our hands regularly to calling out racism to checking on elderly neighbors , we can do a lot to support each other .
And while one of the effects of coronavirus can be physical isolation — either because of quarantine or “ social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ officials to reduce viral spread — experts say that staying connected with others , at least in some way , is more important than ever .
As Stacy Torres , an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California , San Francisco , told Vox , “ You don ’ t want to isolate yourself to the point where you ’ re not also supporting others.
” Take basic precautions — not just for yourself but for others At this point , many people are probably aware of some of the precautions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risk of getting sick .
But the same precautions can also help reduce the spread of coronavirus , in turn reducing its toll on elderly people and those with other health conditions , who are most likely to become severely ill. That ’ s why even if you ’ re young and healthy , medical experts agree it ’ s important to follow certain simple steps .
First of all , wash your hands .
As Vox ’ s German Lopez and Julia Belluz report , it ’ s “ one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ infectious disease , ” capable of reducing respiratory infections by 15 to 20 percent .
You should wash your hands after using the bathroom , blowing your nose , coughing , sneezing , or caring for a sick person , and before eating .
Other precautions include avoiding touching your face , staying home when you ’ re sick , and cleaning surfaces that you touch a lot , like your phone , as James Hamblin writes at the Atlantic .
These simple steps can help protect you and those around you , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ powerlessness .
“ Anytime there ’ s something new , particularly when we can ’ t see it or feel it or taste it , [ it ] can create increased anxiety , ” Robin Gurwitch , a psychologist and professor at Duke University School of Medicine , told Vox .
But it can help reduce people ’ s worries to know that “ there are things we can do.
” “ We can really mitigate the impact of this disease , ” Nancy Messonnier , director of CDC ’ s National Center @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reporters on Monday .
“ There are personal responsibilities that we ’ re asking everyone in the United States to take.
” If you do feel sick , here ’ s some guidance from public health experts on seeking medical information and help .
If you ’ re not in a high-risk group and have symptoms , you should call a health professional — a doctor , a nurse , or a public health official .
Like washing your hands , having some necessities on hand in your home — if you ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them — is something that can help you and others .
If you ’ re quarantined , or if the place where you live asks people to stay home to reduce spread , you and your family will need to have things like food , toiletries , and medications on hand ( though as some have pointed out , not everyone is able to get a supply of medications in advance , one of the many shortcomings of the American health care system that have been highlighted by coronavirus ) .
But it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in your home .
Isolation measures will cause more people to depend on delivery , as Zeynep Tufekci writes at Scientific American .
“ But there are only so many delivery workers and while deliveries are better than people going shopping , it ’ s still a risk to everyone involved , ” Tufekci writes .
“ So if fewer people need deliveries , then fewer people will get sick , and more people who need help such as the elderly can still get deliveries as the services will be less overwhelmed.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ workers lack paid sick time and , if they make a lot of deliveries to sick people , risk getting an illness they can ’ t afford .
Tufekci recommends enough nonperishable food for two to three weeks , along with some bottled water in case of a disruption in access ( though , she notes , this is less likely than community isolation measures ) , any prescriptions you need , and basic over-the-counter medications .
But she and others also warn people not to buy too much .
As she points @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most healthy people , and are also running out in many places , making it harder for those who do need them , like health care workers , to get them .
And if you have the ability to purchase what you need , Torres says , “ don ’ t go overboard with stockpiling , ” since that could make it harder for low-income people — who may not be able to afford to order online or go to lots of different stores — to get what they need .
In other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sanitizers ( if you can even find one ) , Torres says , not a case .
People have been using the coronavirus , which first sickened people in Wuhan , China , as an opportunity to revive racist stereotypes for months now .
As Jenny G. Zhang wrote at Eater in January , “ the outbreak has had a decidedly dehumanizing effect , reigniting old strains of racism and xenophobia that frame Chinese people as uncivilized , barbaric ‘ others ’ who bring with them dangerous , contagious diseases and an appetite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ animals outside the norms of Occidental diets.
” Media outlets have at times played into stereotypes , often using people in Asia or of Asian descent as the “ face ” of the coronavirus crisis , as Vox ’ s Nylah Burton reports , even though “ the outbreak is not confined to — nor can be blamed on — Asian people.
” In fact , there have been numerous reports of discrimination and even assault against people of Asian descent , perpetrated by people who have used coronavirus as an excuse for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have lost business as people have avoided restaurants and other public places there .
Even health officials have sometimes enabled racism — as Torres and Xuemei Cao wrote in a recent USA Today op-ed , the University of California Berkeley health center was recently criticized for an Instagram post that referred to fear of interacting with Asian people as a “ common reaction ” to coronavirus news .
The school apologized after widespread condemnation , and for people who feel safe and able to do so , calling out racism around coronavirus can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ It may take , in some instances , bravery and dealing with awkwardness , but I think it ’ s important to say something.
” Many people may also need to check their own biases , Torres said , making sure that their behavior during this time is informed by science and not racism .
That means following recommendations from health officials , “ not avoiding whole areas just because a certain ethnic or racial group lives there.
” If businesses owned by people of Asian descent in your area are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from them — a point city officials around the country have made by visiting Chinatowns in recent weeks .
Don ’ t write off the people most vulnerable to the virus — reach out to them The fact that coronavirus appears most deadly in older people and those with underlying medical conditions has been reassuring for some who are young and relatively healthy .
But some have gone beyond reassurance and into dismissing coronavirus as unimportant because it “ only ” kills the old and sick .
This attitude is “ really dangerous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have a chronic illness , people who have disabilities , and older adults ” to a category of people who somehow don ’ t matter , Torres said , sending the message that “ we don ’ t have to care about this group as much.
” Combating such narratives as a society is about “ reaffirming our commitment that every life is valuable , ” Torres said .
“ These are not just , oh , those people over there .
These are our neighbors , these are people in our communities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” And on an individual level , for people who are young and currently healthy , pushing back against ageism can be as simple as making a point to check in on older relatives , neighbors , and people in your community , Torres said .
The National Council on Aging has some basic tips for helping older people during this time , including making sure they have plenty of food and medical supplies on hand , including anything needed for dialysis or wound care .
The CDC has recommended that people over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crowds , and officials note that if you are sick , you should not visit an older adult or someone with a chronic condition that puts them at risk .
However , you can always check in on loved ones and community members with a call or FaceTime .
If you are caring for older relatives , health officials also recommend identifying a backup caregiver who can step in if you get sick .
While some groups of people may be most vulnerable to the virus itself , others , including those who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feeling the mental health impact of living in fear of a global pandemic .
For those experiencing mental health challenges during this time , Gurwitch , the Duke psychologist , recommends resources like the Disaster Distress Helpline — as well as , if possible , taking a break from the news .
To support others who are having a hard time right now , Gurwitch says that just dismissing their worries can be counterproductive .
“ If I tell you , don ’ t worry about it , everything ’ s fine , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discounts my concerns.
” Instead , “ with our friends and families that are feeling distressed , we can empathize and we can validate that this can be a really scary , anxiety-provoking time.
” Rather than telling someone not to worry , consider asking what they are doing for self-care , Gurwitch said .
And stay in touch if you can , “ because when we sit with our thoughts all by ourselves , they can spiral , ” she said .
With ever-changing restrictions and recommendations , meeting in person isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advises people to plan ahead for how they might stay connected with friends , loved ones , and community members if they are quarantined or isolated , whether that ’ s FaceTiming with relatives or finding a way to stream a church service online .
Be informed and mindful of those most impacted Misinformation about coronavirus , whether it comes from social media users or , troublingly , President Trump , can feed xenophobia and make people less safe .
Experts agree that ordinary people should be getting their information from trusted sources @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
“ We really need to make sure that the information that we are basing our actions upon is coming from a trusted messenger , ” Gurwitch said .
But being informed isn ’ t just about understanding the virus and appropriate precautions .
It ’ s also about understanding the policy environment in which the virus occurs , and advocating for the changes you want to see to that environment .
As Vox ’ s Dylan Scott points out , the spread of coronavirus is an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one , for paid sick leave in the United States .
It ’ s also a reminder of the millions of people in America who are uninsured or underinsured in America , and how vulnerable they are , both medically and financially , to a variety of public health threats beyond just this one .
Not everyone has the luxury of thinking about public policy right now , but if you do , there are a lot of places to start .
Meanwhile , those in positions of power need to understand what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right now .
People who work in food service , elder care , or cleaning likely interact with a lot of people every day and may be especially vulnerable to getting sick , Torres said .
“ These workers are largely women of color , immigrants , making really low wages , stitching together a number of jobs.
” Employers — including anyone who employs a nanny or a house cleaner — need to be “ working with people who may be sick to be able to rest and recover ” as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to care for family members who are sick or children whose schools are closed .
People with the means to do so can also donate to help those most affected by coronavirus .
In the Seattle area , for example , a group of nonprofits and businesses has started the Covid-19 Response Fund , which aims to help people without health insurance , gig economy workers , and others , according to the Seattle Times — the fund is now accepting donations .
The Center for Disaster Philanthropy also has a dedicated fund @ @ @ @ @ @ @ general recommendations for donations : the center advises donating to organizations working in places with poor access to medical care , as well as organizations that focus on clean water and general sanitation and hygiene .
Overall , there can be a temptation during times of crisis to think of oneself and one ’ s family first — and depending on your situation , you may not have the resources to do more .
But for people who do have the ability to support others , it ’ s a crucial time to @ @ @

Right now, more than 109,000 people around the world have contracted the novel coronavirus, and more than 3,800 have died. Meanwhile, much of the world is waiting anxiously, wondering how bad the pandemic threat will get and whether it will affect those they love.
It’s easy to feel powerless in a time like this — there’s not yet a vaccine or drug for Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. And Americans are watching their government scramble to implement measures to keep them safe — something it may not be entirely prepared to do.
But while individuals may not be able to halt the spread of coronavirus, there are some steps we can take to help protect the most vulnerable — and to combat some of the social ills exacerbated by the virus, like racism and age discrimination.
From washing our hands regularly to calling out racism to checking on elderly neighbors, we can do a lot to support each other. And while one of the effects of coronavirus can be physical isolation — either because of quarantine or “social distancing” measures imposed by public health officials to reduce viral spread — experts say that staying connected with others, at least in some way, is more important than ever.
As Stacy Torres, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, San Francisco, told Vox, “You don’t want to isolate yourself to the point where you’re not also supporting others.”
Take basic precautions — not just for yourself but for others
At this point, many people are probably aware of some of the precautions you can take to help reduce your risk of getting sick. But the same precautions can also help reduce the spread of coronavirus, in turn reducing its toll on elderly people and those with other health conditions, who are most likely to become severely ill. That’s why even if you’re young and healthy, medical experts agree it’s important to follow certain simple steps.
First of all, wash your hands. As Vox’s German Lopez and Julia Belluz report, it’s “one of the easiest ways to avoid the spread of infectious disease,” capable of reducing respiratory infections by 15 to 20 percent. You should wash your hands after using the bathroom, blowing your nose, coughing, sneezing, or caring for a sick person, and before eating.
Other precautions include avoiding touching your face, staying home when you’re sick, and cleaning surfaces that you touch a lot, like your phone, as James Hamblin writes at the Atlantic.
These simple steps can help protect you and those around you, and they can also reduce feelings of powerlessness.
“Anytime there’s something new, particularly when we can’t see it or feel it or taste it, [it] can create increased anxiety,” Robin Gurwitch, a psychologist and professor at Duke University School of Medicine, told Vox. But it can help reduce people’s worries to know that “there are things we can do.”
“We can really mitigate the impact of this disease,” Nancy Messonnier, director of CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told reporters on Monday. “There are personal responsibilities that we’re asking everyone in the United States to take.”
If you do feel sick, here’s some guidance from public health experts on seeking medical information and help. If you’re not in a high-risk group and have symptoms, you should call a health professional — a doctor, a nurse, or a public health official.
Prepare — but don’t over-stockpile
Like washing your hands, having some necessities on hand in your home — if you’re in an economic position to buy them — is something that can help you and others. If you’re quarantined, or if the place where you live asks people to stay home to reduce spread, you and your family will need to have things like food, toiletries, and medications on hand (though as some have pointed out, not everyone is able to get a supply of medications in advance, one of the many shortcomings of the American health care system that have been highlighted by coronavirus).
But it’s not just about the people in your home. Isolation measures will cause more people to depend on delivery, as Zeynep Tufekci writes at Scientific American. “But there are only so many delivery workers and while deliveries are better than people going shopping, it’s still a risk to everyone involved,” Tufekci writes. “So if fewer people need deliveries, then fewer people will get sick, and more people who need help such as the elderly can still get deliveries as the services will be less overwhelmed.”
This is especially important since many delivery workers lack paid sick time and, if they make a lot of deliveries to sick people, risk getting an illness they can’t afford.
Tufekci recommends enough nonperishable food for two to three weeks, along with some bottled water in case of a disruption in access (though, she notes, this is less likely than community isolation measures), any prescriptions you need, and basic over-the-counter medications.
But she and others also warn people not to buy too much. As she points out, masks are not necessary for most healthy people, and are also running out in many places, making it harder for those who do need them, like health care workers, to get them.
And if you have the ability to purchase what you need, Torres says, “don’t go overboard with stockpiling,” since that could make it harder for low-income people — who may not be able to afford to order online or go to lots of different stores — to get what they need. In other words, buy just a few hand sanitizers (if you can even find one), Torres says, not a case.
Don’t join in racism and xenophobia
People have been using the coronavirus, which first sickened people in Wuhan, China, as an opportunity to revive racist stereotypes for months now. As Jenny G. Zhang wrote at Eater in January, “the outbreak has had a decidedly dehumanizing effect, reigniting old strains of racism and xenophobia that frame Chinese people as uncivilized, barbaric ‘others’ who bring with them dangerous, contagious diseases and an appetite for dogs, cats, and other animals outside the norms of Occidental diets.”
Media outlets have at times played into stereotypes, often using people in Asia or of Asian descent as the “face” of the coronavirus crisis, as Vox’s Nylah Burton reports, even though “the outbreak is not confined to — nor can be blamed on — Asian people.”
In fact, there have been numerous reports of discrimination and even assault against people of Asian descent, perpetrated by people who have used coronavirus as an excuse for racism. And Chinatowns across the country have lost business as people have avoided restaurants and other public places there. Even health officials have sometimes enabled racism — as Torres and Xuemei Cao wrote in a recent USA Today op-ed, the University of California Berkeley health center was recently criticized for an Instagram post that referred to fear of interacting with Asian people as a “common reaction” to coronavirus news.
The school apologized after widespread condemnation, and for people who feel safe and able to do so, calling out racism around coronavirus can be an appropriate response, Torres said: “It may take, in some instances, bravery and dealing with awkwardness, but I think it’s important to say something.”
Asian American communities have begun to organize and speak up about the racism some are experiencing, Cao told Vox in an email. For instance, Jason Oliver Chang, an associate professor of history and Asian American studies at the University of Connecticut, started a crowdsourced document with resources for fighting racism around coronavirus. The document notes that many are using the hashtag #IAmNotAVirus (started in France as #JeNeSuisPasUnVirus) to share anti-racist messages during the outbreak.
Meanwhile, some people may need to check their own biases, Torres said, making sure that their behavior during this time is informed by science and not racism. That means following recommendations from health officials, “not avoiding whole areas just because a certain ethnic or racial group lives there.”
If businesses owned by people of Asian descent in your area are struggling, you can help by buying from them — a point city officials around the country have made by visiting Chinatowns in recent weeks.
Don’t write off the people most vulnerable to the virus — reach out to them
The fact that coronavirus appears most deadly in older people and those with underlying medical conditions has been reassuring for some who are young and relatively healthy. But some have gone beyond reassurance and into dismissing coronavirus as unimportant because it “only” kills the old and sick.
This attitude is “really dangerous because it sort of relegates people who have a chronic illness, people who have disabilities, and older adults” to a category of people who somehow don’t matter, Torres said, sending the message that “we don’t have to care about this group as much.”
Combating such narratives as a society is about “reaffirming our commitment that every life is valuable,” Torres said. “These are not just, oh, those people over there. These are our neighbors, these are people in our communities, these are people in our families.”
And on an individual level, for people who are young and currently healthy, pushing back against ageism can be as simple as making a point to check in on older relatives, neighbors, and people in your community, Torres said.
“We need to be aware of the emotional needs of older adults,” said Cao, who also studies older people’s social connections. “Take some time to talk to our parents, extended family members or friends who may be self-isolating at home.”
The National Council on Aging has some basic tips for helping older people during this time, including making sure they have plenty of food and medical supplies on hand, including anything needed for dialysis or wound care. If you are caring for older relatives, health officials also recommend identifying a backup caregiver who can step in if you get sick.
The CDC has recommended that people over 60 stay home if possible and avoid crowds, and officials note that if you are sick, you should not visit an older adult or someone with a chronic condition that puts them at risk. However, you can always check in on loved ones and community members with a call or FaceTime. “During the outbreak, we can still cultivate our support network online while maintaining social distancing in a physical sense,” Cao said.
While some groups of people may be most vulnerable to the virus itself, others, including those who experience anxiety and depression, may be feeling the mental health impact of living in fear of a global pandemic. For those experiencing mental health challenges during this time, Gurwitch, the Duke psychologist, recommends resources like the Disaster Distress Helpline — as well as, if possible, taking a break from the news.
To support others who are having a hard time right now, Gurwitch says that just dismissing their worries can be counterproductive. “If I tell you, don’t worry about it, everything’s fine,” she said, “that really discounts my concerns.” Instead, “with our friends and families that are feeling distressed, we can empathize and we can validate that this can be a really scary, anxiety-provoking time.”
Rather than telling someone not to worry, consider asking what they are doing for self-care, Gurwitch said. And stay in touch if you can, “because when we sit with our thoughts all by ourselves, they can spiral,” she said.
With ever-changing restrictions and recommendations, meeting in person isn’t always possible. But Gurwitch advises people to plan ahead for how they might stay connected with friends, loved ones, and community members if they are quarantined or isolated, whether that’s FaceTiming with relatives or finding a way to stream a church service online.
Be informed and mindful of those most impacted
Misinformation about coronavirus, whether it comes from social media users or, troublingly, President Trump, can feed xenophobia and make people less safe. Experts agree that ordinary people should be getting their information from trusted sources like the World Health Organization or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We really need to make sure that the information that we are basing our actions upon is coming from a trusted messenger,” Gurwitch said.
But being informed isn’t just about understanding the virus and appropriate precautions. It’s also about understanding the policy environment in which the virus occurs, and advocating for the changes you want to see to that environment. As Vox’s Dylan Scott points out, the spread of coronavirus is an excellent case, if anyone still needed one, for paid sick leave in the United States. It’s also a reminder of the millions of people in America who are uninsured or underinsured in America, and how vulnerable they are, both medically and financially, to a variety of public health threats beyond just this one. Not everyone has the luxury of thinking about public policy right now, but if you do, there are a lot of places to start.
Meanwhile, those in positions of power need to understand what those with less privilege are going through right now. People who work in food service, elder care, or cleaning likely interact with a lot of people every day and may be especially vulnerable to getting sick, Torres said. “These workers are largely women of color, immigrants, making really low wages, stitching together a number of jobs.”
Employers — including anyone who employs a nanny or a house cleaner — need to be “working with people who may be sick to be able to rest and recover” as well as making sure they have time off to care for family members who are sick or children whose schools are closed.
People with the means to do so can also donate to help those most affected by coronavirus. In the Seattle area, for example, a group of nonprofits and businesses has started the Covid-19 Response Fund, which aims to help people without health insurance, gig economy workers, and others, according to the Seattle Times — the fund is now accepting donations. The Center for Disaster Philanthropy also has a dedicated fund for coronavirus response, as well as general recommendations for donations: the center advises donating to organizations working in places with poor access to medical care, as well as organizations that focus on clean water and general sanitation and hygiene.
People can also donate to local food banks. In Washington, a statewide network of food banks is asking for hygiene products, like hand sanitizer. Houston is seeking volunteers to pack meal kits, and in Stamford, Connecticut, a food bank is having a hard time keeping items on its shelves. Food banks are vital to feeding low-income communities and the elderly, so finding out and fulfilling what local food banks need can go a long way during the crisis.
Overall, there can be a temptation during times of crisis to think of oneself and one’s family first — and depending on your situation, you may not have the resources to do more. But for people who do have the ability to support others, it’s a crucial time to do so.


vox--2020-03-09--The Saudi Arabia-Russia oil war, explained

A long-standing deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia — two of the world ’ s oil-producing powerhouses — fell through over the weekend , sending global markets into a spiral and dashing future economic prospects in the US .
And it has almost everything to do with the coronavirus — or , more specifically , the drop in Asia ’ s oil consumption that ’ s being driven by the coronavirus outbreak there .
Last week , members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries ( OPEC ) , a cartel of 15 countries of oil-producing nations , met @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to discuss what to do as the disease ’ s impact has lowered global demand for oil .
Russia is not part of the bloc , but Russian officials were invited to the meeting .
That ’ s because three years ago Russia made a deal to coordinate its production levels with the group , in a pact known as OPEC+ .
At last week ’ s meeting , Saudi Arabia , the cartel ’ s leader , suggested the participants collectively cut their oil production by about 1 million barrels per day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cut of around 500,000 barrels a day .
Doing so would keep oil prices higher , which would bring in more revenue for nations in the bloc whose economies are heavily dependent on crude exports .
Riyadh considered the move necessary as Asia , which is roiling from thousands of cases of coronavirus mainly in China and South Korea , no longer consumes as much energy as it did only a few months ago .
China ’ s refineries , for example , cut their imports of foreign oil by about 20 percent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a drop in the commodity ’ s price , which thus hurts countries ’ bottom lines .
The Russians , wary of such a move for weeks , opted against the plan .
It ’ s still unclear exactly why that ’ s the case .
Some say Russia wants prices to stay low to hurt the American shale oil industry or is gearing up to seize a bigger sliver of Asian and global oil demand for itself .
“ The Russians are more worried about market share and think they ’ d @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than cooperating at this point , ” says Emma Ashford , an expert on petrostates at the CATO Institute in Washington .
Saudi Arabia didn ’ t take too kindly to the Kremlin ’ s decision and responded by slashing its export prices over the weekend to start a price war with Russia .
That brought the price per barrel down by about $ 11 to $ 35 a barrel — the biggest one-day drop since 1991 .
The upshot of that decision is the Saudis have positioned themselves to snatch what ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ having a cheaper product to sell , aided by very low production costs per barrel .
But there ’ s a big downside : The price for oil is a global one .
If the Saudis tank it , as they just have , it goes down pretty much everywhere .
Dwindling revenues mean global energy companies — including smaller shale-producing firms in Texas and the Dakotas — make less profit .
That ’ s spooked markets around the world , with shares in Tokyo dropping 5 percent and a top index on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forcing a trading stop shortly after open on Monday .
President Donald Trump is unhappy with the news , of course , as a growing economy and a strong stock market are some of his best cases for reelection in November .
But he simultaneously seems happy that lower oil prices mean prices at the gas pump in the US will also go down , which could potentially strengthen his electoral chances .
Few can predict what will happen next , especially since it ’ s unclear what further effects the coronavirus may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is clear , though , is that lower demand for oil and longer-term trends in the energy market have ruptured the tepid Saudi-Russia alliance for now — and the consequences will be felt everywhere , including in the United States .
“ At this point , it ’ s every country for themselves , ” Emily Meierding , a Naval Postgraduate School expert on international oil cooperation , told me .
In 2014 , the US boomed onto the scene with its revolution in shale energy , capturing a greater and greater slice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just seven years , US shale oil production grew to over 4 million barrels a day from around 0.4 million barrels a day .
That stunning rise completely upended the years-long dynamic in which the US was mostly an energy importer , not exporter .
Instead of paying Saudi Arabia and Russia for their oil , America was now a serious competitor .
“ For the next 50 years , we can expect to reap the benefits of the shale revolution , ” Harold Hamm , a pioneer in the discovery of shale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time .
“ It ’ s the biggest thing that ever happened to America.
” Naturally , the Saudis and Russians , the world ’ s two largest oil exporters at the time , weren ’ t pleased .
The Saudis through OPEC responded later that year — not by cutting production to keep prices higher , but rather by flooding the market with oil .
With its billions of dollars in foreign exchange reserves , the Saudis knew they could withstand the drop in profits in service of the long-term goal : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American industry would go out of business .
Despite being asked by the Saudis , Russia didn ’ t really cut its production — leaving Saudi Arabia to shoulder the burden .
The US shale industry persisted , though , and continued to gain strength .
Riyadh ’ s plan backfired .
Between America ’ s growing exports and Saudi Arabia ’ s overproduction , there was a glut of oil for sale and the price continued to plummet .
Saudi Arabia and Russia survived their change in fortunes by selling cheaper oil @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crude during its economic slowdown of 2015 and 2016 .
That made the exporters even more reliant on their prominent Chinese customer .
They still had to contend with their America problem , though .
In 2016 , Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to cooperate in the world oil market by coordinating their production .
Ashford , CATO ’ s petrostates expert , told me that by themselves those countries couldn ’ t swing global oil prices .
Together , they could .
Between 2017 and now , Meierding told me , Saudi-led @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to 5 million barrels per day .
That didn ’ t really lead to a hike in price , though , because the US shale industry kept producing and exporting oil .
That trend continued as the US surpassed both Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world ’ s leading crude producer in 2018 .
It gave Washington way more power over the energy market and future revenues for Riyadh and Moscow .
Still , the Riyadh-Moscow alliance continued , as there were no major disruptions to the energy market — that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Asia to tank .
That gave both Saudi Arabia and Russia a choice : continue in their pact , or try to fend for themselves in a more competitive marketplace .
The events of this past week — Russia ’ s split from the pact and Saudi ’ s retaliation — make crystal clear the path each side has chosen .
To say that the Saudi-Russia spat was a surprise would be an understatement .
“ People have been expecting this kind of break for a while , ” the Naval Postgraduate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ but no one expected this to be such a dramatic break.
” It ’ s why experts are split on the real reason for why this happened .
But two schools of thought — which aren ’ t mutually exclusive — have emerged .
The first is that Russia wants prices lowered — not propped up via its Saudi deal — to hurt the American shale industry .
The immediate results seem promising , if that is the Kremlin ’ s true intention .
Stocks for smaller to mid-size US shale companies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the valuation for some dropping as much as 45 percent in recent days .
This would also be a way for Russia to get back at the US for sanctioning its major energy company , Rosneft , for its deals with Venezuela last month .
And there are reports indicating the US shale market was at least part of the reason why Russia walked away from the OPEC plan , as Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to think that working together to keep oil prices high would only help America .
Now Moscow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it doesn ’ t involve cooperating with the Saudis , it involves competing against both them and the US .
But some experts are skeptical this was Russia ’ s true or primary motivation .
They told me if smaller US companies go bust during this time , bigger American firms like ExxonMobil will just buy their assets .
There will be more consolidation — fewer companies in the shale oil industry , perhaps — but America ’ s production won ’ t go away .
Russia ’ s play , then , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leads to the second and more convincing theory : that Russia decided to make a play for more power in the global oil market .
It couldn ’ t do that by agreeing once in a while to cut production with the Saudis .
After all , Russian firms still make money if those companies export in even at a time of low prices .
The profit margin will be thinner , but they ’ ll still gain customers and some revenue .
“ It ’ s all about regaining market share , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are now in a price and production war .
The problem is that Russia ’ s play and the Saudi response may end up hurting them both .
Shares in their national oil companies — Rosneft and Saudi Aramco , respectively — have already dropped .
And unlike in 2015-2016 during which China bought up a lot of oil during a period of low prices , there aren ’ t really any buyers like that to pick up the slack right now , as demand is dropping worldwide , Ellen Wald , an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think tank in Washington , told me .
That makes Russia ’ s decision likely an ill-advised one .
It ’ s going to lose revenue in its bid to compete with America while not necessarily gaining strength in the energy marketplace .
Saudi Arabia is hoping that lowering prices , which also hurts its own bottom line , will get Moscow to realize that and start cooperating again .
The question now , Wald says , is : “ Who will blink first ?
”

A long-standing deal between Saudi Arabia and Russia — two of the world’s oil-producing powerhouses — fell through over the weekend, sending global markets into a spiral and dashing future economic prospects in the US.
And it has almost everything to do with the coronavirus — or, more specifically, the drop in Asia’s oil consumption that’s being driven by the coronavirus outbreak there.
Last week, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), a cartel of 15 countries of oil-producing nations, met at OPEC’s headquarters in Vienna to discuss what to do as the disease’s impact has lowered global demand for oil.
Russia is not part of the bloc, but Russian officials were invited to the meeting. That’s because three years ago Russia made a deal to coordinate its production levels with the group, in a pact known as OPEC+.
At last week’s meeting, Saudi Arabia, the cartel’s leader, suggested the participants collectively cut their oil production by about 1 million barrels per day, with Russia making the most dramatic cut of around 500,000 barrels a day. Doing so would keep oil prices higher, which would bring in more revenue for nations in the bloc whose economies are heavily dependent on crude exports.
Riyadh considered the move necessary as Asia, which is roiling from thousands of cases of coronavirus mainly in China and South Korea, no longer consumes as much energy as it did only a few months ago. China’s refineries, for example, cut their imports of foreign oil by about 20 percent last month. Lower demand leads to a drop in the commodity’s price, which thus hurts countries’ bottom lines.
The Russians, wary of such a move for weeks, opted against the plan. It’s still unclear exactly why that’s the case. Some say Russia wants prices to stay low to hurt the American shale oil industry or is gearing up to seize a bigger sliver of Asian and global oil demand for itself.
“The Russians are more worried about market share and think they’d do better competing with the Saudis rather than cooperating at this point,” says Emma Ashford, an expert on petrostates at the CATO Institute in Washington.
Saudi Arabia didn’t take too kindly to the Kremlin’s decision and responded by slashing its export prices over the weekend to start a price war with Russia. That brought the price per barrel down by about $11 to $35 a barrel — the biggest one-day drop since 1991.
Oil is on track for its worst day since 1991 and second worst day on record ... dropped more than 30% at the low to levels not seen since Feb. 2016 #OOTT
Here's what's going on: https://t.co/dcQYzkPeLJ
cc @naterattner pic.twitter.com/ZPCm5KXLeF — Pippa Stevens (@PippaStevens13) March 9, 2020
The upshot of that decision is the Saudis have positioned themselves to snatch what’s left of Asian oil demand by having a cheaper product to sell, aided by very low production costs per barrel. But there’s a big downside: The price for oil is a global one. If the Saudis tank it, as they just have, it goes down pretty much everywhere.
Dwindling revenues mean global energy companies — including smaller shale-producing firms in Texas and the Dakotas — make less profit. That’s spooked markets around the world, with shares in Tokyo dropping 5 percent and a top index on Wall Street falling by 7 percent, forcing a trading stop shortly after open on Monday.
President Donald Trump is unhappy with the news, of course, as a growing economy and a strong stock market are some of his best cases for reelection in November. But he simultaneously seems happy that lower oil prices mean prices at the gas pump in the US will also go down, which could potentially strengthen his electoral chances.
Good for the consumer, gasoline prices coming down! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 9, 2020
Few can predict what will happen next, especially since it’s unclear what further effects the coronavirus may have on the global economy. What is clear, though, is that lower demand for oil and longer-term trends in the energy market have ruptured the tepid Saudi-Russia alliance for now — and the consequences will be felt everywhere, including in the United States.
“At this point, it’s every country for themselves,” Emily Meierding, a Naval Postgraduate School expert on international oil cooperation, told me.
The recent global energy market, very briefly explained
In 2014, the US boomed onto the scene with its revolution in shale energy, capturing a greater and greater slice of the global oil market. In just seven years, US shale oil production grew to over 4 million barrels a day from around 0.4 million barrels a day.
That stunning rise completely upended the years-long dynamic in which the US was mostly an energy importer, not exporter. Instead of paying Saudi Arabia and Russia for their oil, America was now a serious competitor.
“For the next 50 years, we can expect to reap the benefits of the shale revolution,” Harold Hamm, a pioneer in the discovery of shale oil, told the Guardian at the time. “It’s the biggest thing that ever happened to America.”
Naturally, the Saudis and Russians, the world’s two largest oil exporters at the time, weren’t pleased.
The Saudis through OPEC responded later that year — not by cutting production to keep prices higher, but rather by flooding the market with oil. With its billions of dollars in foreign exchange reserves, the Saudis knew they could withstand the drop in profits in service of the long-term goal: plunging prices so low that the nascent American industry would go out of business. Despite being asked by the Saudis, Russia didn’t really cut its production — leaving Saudi Arabia to shoulder the burden.
The US shale industry persisted, though, and continued to gain strength. Riyadh’s plan backfired. Between America’s growing exports and Saudi Arabia’s overproduction, there was a glut of oil for sale and the price continued to plummet.
Saudi Arabia and Russia survived their change in fortunes by selling cheaper oil to China, which desperately needed priced-down crude during its economic slowdown of 2015 and 2016. That made the exporters even more reliant on their prominent Chinese customer.
They still had to contend with their America problem, though. In 2016, Saudi Arabia and Russia agreed to cooperate in the world oil market by coordinating their production. Ashford, CATO’s petrostates expert, told me that by themselves those countries couldn’t swing global oil prices. Together, they could.
Between 2017 and now, Meierding told me, Saudi-led OPEC cut its oil output by 4 to 5 million barrels per day. That didn’t really lead to a hike in price, though, because the US shale industry kept producing and exporting oil.
That trend continued as the US surpassed both Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world’s leading crude producer in 2018. It gave Washington way more power over the energy market and future revenues for Riyadh and Moscow.
Still, the Riyadh-Moscow alliance continued, as there were no major disruptions to the energy market — that is, until coronavirus led demand for oil in Asia to tank. That gave both Saudi Arabia and Russia a choice: continue in their pact, or try to fend for themselves in a more competitive marketplace.
The events of this past week — Russia’s split from the pact and Saudi’s retaliation — make crystal clear the path each side has chosen.
“Who will blink first?”
To say that the Saudi-Russia spat was a surprise would be an understatement. “People have been expecting this kind of break for a while,” the Naval Postgraduate School’s Meierding told me, “but no one expected this to be such a dramatic break.”
It’s why experts are split on the real reason for why this happened. But two schools of thought — which aren’t mutually exclusive — have emerged.
The first is that Russia wants prices lowered — not propped up via its Saudi deal — to hurt the American shale industry. The immediate results seem promising, if that is the Kremlin’s true intention. Stocks for smaller to mid-size US shale companies are in free fall now, with the valuation for some dropping as much as 45 percent in recent days. This would also be a way for Russia to get back at the US for sanctioning its major energy company, Rosneft, for its deals with Venezuela last month.
And there are reports indicating the US shale market was at least part of the reason why Russia walked away from the OPEC plan, as Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to think that working together to keep oil prices high would only help America. Now Moscow needs a new way forward — and it doesn’t involve cooperating with the Saudis, it involves competing against both them and the US.
But some experts are skeptical this was Russia’s true or primary motivation. They told me if smaller US companies go bust during this time, bigger American firms like ExxonMobil will just buy their assets. There will be more consolidation — fewer companies in the shale oil industry, perhaps — but America’s production won’t go away. Russia’s play, then, would be doomed to fail.
Which leads to the second and more convincing theory: that Russia decided to make a play for more power in the global oil market. It couldn’t do that by agreeing once in a while to cut production with the Saudis. After all, Russian firms still make money if those companies export in even at a time of low prices. The profit margin will be thinner, but they’ll still gain customers and some revenue.
“It’s all about regaining market share,” says Meierding, and both countries are now in a price and production war.
The problem is that Russia’s play and the Saudi response may end up hurting them both. Shares in their national oil companies — Rosneft and Saudi Aramco, respectively — have already dropped. And unlike in 2015-2016 during which China bought up a lot of oil during a period of low prices, there aren’t really any buyers like that to pick up the slack right now, as demand is dropping worldwide, Ellen Wald, an oil market expert at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, told me.
That makes Russia’s decision likely an ill-advised one. It’s going to lose revenue in its bid to compete with America while not necessarily gaining strength in the energy marketplace. Saudi Arabia is hoping that lowering prices, which also hurts its own bottom line, will get Moscow to realize that and start cooperating again.
The question now, Wald says, is: “Who will blink first?”


vox--2020-03-09--Why we should stop comparing the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak to the 1918 Spanish flu

In a climate of international conflict and turmoil , a disease begins to spread across the globe .
It hits the United States on the way to becoming a worldwide pandemic .
While most infected survive , the fatality rate is well above that of an ordinary flu .
Eventually , one in three humans on earth is infected .
At least 17 million people , and maybe as many as 100 million , perish .
This is not a prediction — it ’ s a description of how the influenza pandemic of 1918- ’ 19 ( which came to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flu ” ; more on that below ) became one of the deadliest , , if not the deadliest , disease outbreak in modern history .
Comparisons to the 1918 outbreak have been rife since the novel coronavirus outbreak began in January .
We recently marked the centennial of the 1918 pandemic , and fear of a repeat pervades discussions of the current outbreak .
But even granting that we are early in the history of the coronavirus outbreak , there are important differences between our current predicament and the Spanish flu .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ from what we know at this point , the case fatality rate of the coronavirus is lower , by some estimates , than that of the Spanish flu .
We also enjoy a much more robust public health infrastructure in 2019 ; in 1918 , as Laura Spinney documents in her pandemic history Pale Rider , medical experts still hadn ’ t agreed that the flu is caused by a virus .
Other differences , like the advent of widespread passenger air travel and much deeper global supply chains , put us at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But many experts caution that we should avoid comparisons to the Spanish flu .
As flu expert Jeremy Brown writes in the Atlantic , “ What ’ s most striking about these comparisons … is not the similarities between the two episodes , but the distance that medicine has traveled in the intervening century.
” Spinney concurs .
“ The Spanish flu is one of the worst , if not the worst , pandemic humanity ever went through , and it ’ s really anomalous in the history of flu pandemics , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve had 15 flu pandemics in the last 500 years , and the last five since the 1890s have been properly measured in a scientific way .
None [ but the Spanish flu ] has killed more than 3 million people maximum.
” The “ Asian flu ” of 1957 and the “ Hong Kong flu ” of 1968 , for instance , were both met with more modern tools of disease surveillance and had death tolls in the range of 500,000 to 2 million : big numbers , for sure , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very brief history of the 1918 flu As Spinney notes in Pale Rider , it can be difficult to pin down the exact origins of the 1918 influenza outbreak .
One theory has it starting on American soil , in Kansas , where it migrated from birds to humans .
Albert Gitchell , an Army private and mess cook based in Fort Riley , Kansas , is sometimes identified as the first victim , reporting his symptoms on March 4 , 1918 .
Unfortunately for the world , US soldiers at Fort Riley @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Western Front of World War I .
A month later , Spinney writes , “ the flu was epidemic in the American Midwest , on the cities of the eastern seaboard from which the soldiers embarked , and in the French ports where they disembarked.
” There are other theories , however .
Spinney told me in a phone call that one theory tries to explain the unusual virulence of the 1918 flu by positing that it developed first in Europe ’ s trenches .
Normally viruses decline in their deadliness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to keep spreading .
That didn ’ t happen with the 1918 flu — perhaps , Spinney says , “ because the virus might have got started in the trenches filled with young men who weren ’ t very mobile .
They were stuck in the trenches like sardines for days , weeks , months .
There was no evolutionary pressure for it to moderate its virulence.
” Whether it began in the trenches or ended up there after the arrival of American troops , the virus spread quickly to German soldiers and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flu was censored in most countries with war censorship regimes , leading authorities in Spain to erroneously think that it was alone in enduring such a brutal outbreak — hence the name “ Spanish flu.
” Russian POWs returning from Germany spread the disease to the newly created Soviet Union , and by May and June , various countries in Africa , as well as India , China , and Japan , all had outbreaks .
This is sometimes called the “ first wave ” of the flu , because while it had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I , where it weakened troops on both sides ) , it was not the debilitating crisis that we now remember as the Spanish flu .
The second wave , Spinney writes , began in August 1918 almost simultaneously in ports in Freetown , Sierra Leone ; Brest , France ; and Boston , Massachusetts .
British imperial ships spread it around the country ’ s African holdings , and from South Africa it spread to the rest of the continent .
In a matter of months , the flu was slowing down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ India , China , and Japan , and circulating through mass public celebrations of the war ’ s armistice on November 11 .
Basically the only place not affected was Australia , but a “ third wave ” of the flu in late 1918 eventually hit there , too .
The second wave of the flu , in particular , had more brutal effects than typical influenza , not least because it was likelier than the ordinary flu to be joined by bacterial pneumonia .
This , subsequent research has suggested , caused @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flu outbreak .
When all was said and done , the flu had killed between 17 million and 100 million .
That ’ s a wide range .
While today countries keep detailed records of testing and diagnosis for new outbreaks ( as they ’ ve been doing during the coronavirus crisis ) , there was no such record-keeping capacity in the late 1910s .
As such , research has to rely on estimates comparing actual mortality to a “ baseline ” level of mortality that would have occurred without the flu .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to cobble together , given the unreliability of death records from the period , but estimating counterfactual deaths without the flu is harder still .
It ’ s hard to say when , exactly , the pandemic outbreak receded .
The third wave , beginning in the winter of 1918- ’ 19 , subsided by that summer , and the virus likely lurked around for years , not causing pandemics because most survivors had been exposed and developed antibodies .
The long-term health and economic costs were substantial .
Economist Douglas Almond has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the flu in 1918- ’ 19 received less education , earned lower incomes , and were likelier to have disabilities than people who missed the pandemic in the womb .
Similarities and differences between the 1918 outbreak and now The Spanish flu is frightening because it demonstrates that in a reasonably modern society , a pandemic killing tens of millions of people is very plausible .
But that “ reasonably modern ” society was still much more primitive when it came to medicine and public health than the world of today .
Here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the year 1918 : • We did not know that influenza is caused by a virus , and in fact the scientist Richard Pfeiffer had convinced most of the medical community that it was caused by bacteria ; it wasn ’ t until 1933 that researchers proved conclusively that the flu is a viral infection .
• Antibiotics capable of treating flu-related pneumonia infections ( which are typically caused by bacteria ) were 10 years from being discovered .
• Antiviral drugs were many decades from being developed ; the first came @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no World Health Organization , and efforts to surveil and track the outbreak of new diseases were incredibly rudimentary .
• Most countries in Europe were under war censorship regimes that limited the spread of accurate , lifesaving information about the flu outbreak .
For all the advances we ’ ve made since , what ’ s striking is how some of the measures authorities instituted at the time look very much like the ones we ’ re seeing with the coronavirus outbreak .
Spinney told me , “ They had the kind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re still using today : isolation , quarantine , masks , hand-washing , staggering rush hour so you don ’ t have massive crowds in the metro and the streets .
Those are techniques that are very ancient .
People have always understood you have to keep the healthy and the sick separate.
” We must also weigh the massive strides in public health made since 1918 against the advent of global supply chains and passenger air travel .
“ We have a global population that is four times the size , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the populations are much older with respect to 1918 , and old age weakens immune systems , ” Spinney continues .
All of that makes us more vulnerable , not less , to a pandemic like this .
While antivirals are useful against coronavirus , we do not have a vaccine and will not for at least 18 months , somewhat limiting the public health value of our scientific advances over the last 100 years .
One way we can compare the two outbreaks is by looking at case fatality rates : the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This is always difficult to estimate because there are likely more infections than have been identified by medical authorities .
According to Johns Hopkins researchers , as of this writing there have been 111,363 cases of Covid-19 and 3,892 deaths , for a case fatality rate of about 3.5 percent .
But you should take that number with a grain of salt .
Countries ’ testing protocols vary widely and many , including the US , have only tested a few thousand people while others , like South Korea , have tested @ @ @ @ @ @ @ denominator for the case fatality rate — the total number of infections — is uncertain , and might be undercounted due to lack of testing .
In South Korea , the case fatality rate is currently 0.7 percent , suggesting that better testing might yield more accurate , lower rates .
At the same time , as Julia Belluz explains , accurately measured fatality rates are also going to vary significantly from country to country due to differences in health system capacity , low- and middle-income people ’ s access to health care @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Spanish flu is often cited as 2.5 percent , but this is likely a dramatic underestimate , as science writer Ferris Jabr has written .
The most frequently cited death statistics for the Spanish flu come from Niall Johnson and Juergen Mueller ’ s 2002 study , which estimated the death toll at 50 million and warned that this might be as much as a 100 percent underestimate , implying a total toll of 100 million .
A more recent 2018 paper by Pete Spreeuwenberg , Madelon Kroneman , and John @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 17.4 million .
If the frequently cited estimate of 500 million infections globally is correct , then the latter death toll implies a case fatality rate of 3.5 percent , but using a higher death toll of 50 million , the fatality rate rises to 10 percent .
This is a huge range of uncertainty .
Given how imprecise our counts of total global infections for both the Spanish flu and coronavirus are and how imprecise our estimates for the former ’ s death toll are , it is hard to say anything @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each other in terms of case fatality .
The diseases also differed in whom they infected .
The Spanish flu , unusually for an influenza , was less lethal for older people , perhaps because a similar 1830s flu outbreak granted older people still alive in 1918 some limited immunity .
The coronavirus , by contrast , has had its most devastating impact in China on older people .
Both Covid-19 and the Spanish flu have already had massive effects outside of their immediate health consequences .
The Spanish flu , many World @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the end of the war by weakening the ability of each side to field armies ; it may even have affected the outcome , though the evidence there is weaker .
Covid-19 ’ s economic effects might outstrip the Spanish flu ’ s , even if the health effects remain much milder , due to the economy ’ s move toward in-person services , hospitality , and globalized supply chains , all of which are vulnerable to an outbreak like this .
Indeed , one effect in 1918 that is not likely to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in some countries due to a shortage of workers .
It ’ s natural to want to compare the two outbreaks , and it can be responsible to do so if the comparison is done with care and nuance .
But it ’ s important to keep in mind just how severe the Spanish flu outbreak was , and that while Covid-19 could get much worse , it would have to infect several thousand times as many people as it has to date to match the Spanish flu ’ s reach .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if we fail to adequately adopt measures like social distancing , aggressive testing , and quarantining , and let it get that bad .

In a climate of international conflict and turmoil, a disease begins to spread across the globe. It hits the United States on the way to becoming a worldwide pandemic. While most infected survive, the fatality rate is well above that of an ordinary flu. Eventually, one in three humans on earth is infected. At least 17 million people, and maybe as many as 100 million, perish.
This is not a prediction — it’s a description of how the influenza pandemic of 1918-’19 (which came to be erroneously known as the “Spanish flu”; more on that below) became one of the deadliest, if not the deadliest, disease outbreak in modern history.
Comparisons to the 1918 outbreak have been rife since the novel coronavirus outbreak began in January. We recently marked the centennial of the 1918 pandemic, and fear of a repeat pervades discussions of the current outbreak.
But even granting that we are early in the history of the coronavirus outbreak, there are important differences between our current predicament and the Spanish flu. The underlying diseases are different, and from what we know at this point, the case fatality rate of the coronavirus is lower, by some estimates, than that of the Spanish flu. We also enjoy a much more robust public health infrastructure in 2019; in 1918, as Laura Spinney documents in her pandemic history Pale Rider, medical experts still hadn’t agreed that the flu is caused by a virus.
Other differences, like the advent of widespread passenger air travel and much deeper global supply chains, put us at greater pandemic risk now than in 1918.
But many experts caution that we should avoid comparisons to the Spanish flu. As flu expert Jeremy Brown writes in the Atlantic, “What’s most striking about these comparisons … is not the similarities between the two episodes, but the distance that medicine has traveled in the intervening century.”
Spinney concurs. “The Spanish flu is one of the worst, if not the worst, pandemic humanity ever went through, and it’s really anomalous in the history of flu pandemics,” she explains. “We’ve had 15 flu pandemics in the last 500 years, and the last five since the 1890s have been properly measured in a scientific way. None [but the Spanish flu] has killed more than 3 million people maximum.”
The “Asian flu” of 1957 and the “Hong Kong flu” of 1968, for instance, were both met with more modern tools of disease surveillance and had death tolls in the range of 500,000 to 2 million: big numbers, for sure, but hardly 1918 levels.
The CDC and the WHO recommend several basic measures to help prevent the spread of Covid-19: Wash your hands often for at least 20 seconds.
Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
Clean and disinfect frequently touched objects.
Practice social distancing, and stay home when you are sick.
Contact a health worker if you have symptoms; fever and a dry cough are most common. Guidance may change. Stay informed, and stay safe, with Vox’s coronavirus coverage hub.
A very, very brief history of the 1918 flu
As Spinney notes in Pale Rider, it can be difficult to pin down the exact origins of the 1918 influenza outbreak.
One theory has it starting on American soil, in Kansas, where it migrated from birds to humans. Albert Gitchell, an Army private and mess cook based in Fort Riley, Kansas, is sometimes identified as the first victim, reporting his symptoms on March 4, 1918. Unfortunately for the world, US soldiers at Fort Riley were at that point preparing for deployment to the Western Front of World War I.
A month later, Spinney writes, “the flu was epidemic in the American Midwest, on the cities of the eastern seaboard from which the soldiers embarked, and in the French ports where they disembarked.”
There are other theories, however. Spinney told me in a phone call that one theory tries to explain the unusual virulence of the 1918 flu by positing that it developed first in Europe’s trenches. Normally viruses decline in their deadliness over time because they need living hosts to keep spreading. That didn’t happen with the 1918 flu — perhaps, Spinney says, “because the virus might have got started in the trenches filled with young men who weren’t very mobile. They were stuck in the trenches like sardines for days, weeks, months. There was no evolutionary pressure for it to moderate its virulence.”
Whether it began in the trenches or ended up there after the arrival of American troops, the virus spread quickly to German soldiers and to neutral Spain. News of the flu was censored in most countries with war censorship regimes, leading authorities in Spain to erroneously think that it was alone in enduring such a brutal outbreak — hence the name “Spanish flu.” Russian POWs returning from Germany spread the disease to the newly created Soviet Union, and by May and June, various countries in Africa, as well as India, China, and Japan, all had outbreaks.
This is sometimes called the “first wave” of the flu, because while it had significant effects (particularly on World War I, where it weakened troops on both sides), it was not the debilitating crisis that we now remember as the Spanish flu.
The second wave, Spinney writes, began in August 1918 almost simultaneously in ports in Freetown, Sierra Leone; Brest, France; and Boston, Massachusetts. British imperial ships spread it around the country’s African holdings, and from South Africa it spread to the rest of the continent. In a matter of months, the flu was slowing down combat in Europe, spreading back to India, China, and Japan, and circulating through mass public celebrations of the war’s armistice on November 11.
Basically the only place not affected was Australia, but a “third wave” of the flu in late 1918 eventually hit there, too.
The second wave of the flu, in particular, had more brutal effects than typical influenza, not least because it was likelier than the ordinary flu to be joined by bacterial pneumonia. This, subsequent research has suggested, caused most of the deaths in the 1918 flu outbreak.
When all was said and done, the flu had killed between 17 million and 100 million. That’s a wide range. While today countries keep detailed records of testing and diagnosis for new outbreaks (as they’ve been doing during the coronavirus crisis), there was no such record-keeping capacity in the late 1910s. As such, research has to rely on estimates comparing actual mortality to a “baseline” level of mortality that would have occurred without the flu. Accurate actual death rates are hard enough to cobble together, given the unreliability of death records from the period, but estimating counterfactual deaths without the flu is harder still.
It’s hard to say when, exactly, the pandemic outbreak receded. The third wave, beginning in the winter of 1918-’19, subsided by that summer, and the virus likely lurked around for years, not causing pandemics because most survivors had been exposed and developed antibodies. The long-term health and economic costs were substantial. Economist Douglas Almond has estimated that people exposed in utero to the flu in 1918-’19 received less education, earned lower incomes, and were likelier to have disabilities than people who missed the pandemic in the womb.
Similarities and differences between the 1918 outbreak and now
The Spanish flu is frightening because it demonstrates that in a reasonably modern society, a pandemic killing tens of millions of people is very plausible. But that “reasonably modern” society was still much more primitive when it came to medicine and public health than the world of today.
Here are a few facts about public health in the year 1918:
We did not know that influenza is caused by a virus, and in fact the scientist Richard Pfeiffer had convinced most of the medical community that it was caused by bacteria; it wasn’t until 1933 that researchers proved conclusively that the flu is a viral infection.
Antibiotics capable of treating flu-related pneumonia infections (which are typically caused by bacteria) were 10 years from being discovered.
Antiviral drugs were many decades from being developed; the first came out in 1963.
There was no World Health Organization, and efforts to surveil and track the outbreak of new diseases were incredibly rudimentary.
Most countries in Europe were under war censorship regimes that limited the spread of accurate, lifesaving information about the flu outbreak.
For all the advances we’ve made since, what’s striking is how some of the measures authorities instituted at the time look very much like the ones we’re seeing with the coronavirus outbreak. Spinney told me, “They had the kind of social distancing measures that we’re still using today: isolation, quarantine, masks, hand-washing, staggering rush hour so you don’t have massive crowds in the metro and the streets. Those are techniques that are very ancient. People have always understood you have to keep the healthy and the sick separate.”
We must also weigh the massive strides in public health made since 1918 against the advent of global supply chains and passenger air travel. “We have a global population that is four times the size, and at least in the industrialized world, the populations are much older with respect to 1918, and old age weakens immune systems,” Spinney continues. All of that makes us more vulnerable, not less, to a pandemic like this. While antivirals are useful against coronavirus, we do not have a vaccine and will not for at least 18 months, somewhat limiting the public health value of our scientific advances over the last 100 years.
One way we can compare the two outbreaks is by looking at case fatality rates: the share of infections that lead to death. This is always difficult to estimate because there are likely more infections than have been identified by medical authorities. According to Johns Hopkins researchers, as of this writing there have been 111,363 cases of Covid-19 and 3,892 deaths, for a case fatality rate of about 3.5 percent.
But you should take that number with a grain of salt. Countries’ testing protocols vary widely and many, including the US, have only tested a few thousand people while others, like South Korea, have tested hundreds of thousands. That means the denominator for the case fatality rate — the total number of infections — is uncertain, and might be undercounted due to lack of testing. In South Korea, the case fatality rate is currently 0.7 percent, suggesting that better testing might yield more accurate, lower rates. At the same time, as Julia Belluz explains, accurately measured fatality rates are also going to vary significantly from country to country due to differences in health system capacity, low- and middle-income people’s access to health care, etc.
The case fatality rate of the Spanish flu is often cited as 2.5 percent, but this is likely a dramatic underestimate, as science writer Ferris Jabr has written.
The most frequently cited death statistics for the Spanish flu come from Niall Johnson and Juergen Mueller’s 2002 study, which estimated the death toll at 50 million and warned that this might be as much as a 100 percent underestimate, implying a total toll of 100 million. A more recent 2018 paper by Pete Spreeuwenberg, Madelon Kroneman, and John Paget gets a much lower estimate of 17.4 million. If the frequently cited estimate of 500 million infections globally is correct, then the latter death toll implies a case fatality rate of 3.5 percent, but using a higher death toll of 50 million, the fatality rate rises to 10 percent.
This is a huge range of uncertainty. Given how imprecise our counts of total global infections for both the Spanish flu and coronavirus are and how imprecise our estimates for the former’s death toll are, it is hard to say anything definitive about how they stack up against each other in terms of case fatality.
The diseases also differed in whom they infected. The Spanish flu, unusually for an influenza, was less lethal for older people, perhaps because a similar 1830s flu outbreak granted older people still alive in 1918 some limited immunity. The coronavirus, by contrast, has had its most devastating impact in China on older people.
Both Covid-19 and the Spanish flu have already had massive effects outside of their immediate health consequences. The Spanish flu, many World War I historians agree, sped up the end of the war by weakening the ability of each side to field armies; it may even have affected the outcome, though the evidence there is weaker.
Covid-19’s economic effects might outstrip the Spanish flu’s, even if the health effects turn out to be milder, due to the economy’s move toward in-person services, hospitality, and globalized supply chains, all of which are vulnerable to an outbreak like this. Indeed, one effect in 1918 that is not likely to be repeated is an increase in wages in some countries due to a shortage of workers.
It’s natural to want to compare the two outbreaks, and it can be responsible to do so if the comparison is done with care and nuance. But it’s important to keep in mind just how severe the Spanish flu outbreak was, and that while Covid-19 could get much worse, it would have to infect several thousand times as many people as it has to date to match the Spanish flu’s reach. The Covid-19 situation may only get that bad if we fail to adequately adopt measures like social distancing, aggressive testing, and quarantining, and let it get that bad.