We aren’t experiencing anything new with the coronavirus pandemic. It’s happened before. Most don’t realize it or how much better off we still are from people who lived in the past.

Take, for example, the Russian “Flu”, then commonly called La Grippe, which swept the world starting in 1889. Last year, Bloomberg Opinion write, Mark Buchanan wrote about this:

I put quotes around “flu” because that’s what, until 15 years ago, most historians and epidemiologists believed it was. Since then, research has uncovered evidence that the 1889 pandemic may actually have been caused by a coronavirus much like today’s SARS-CoV-2 — one that leapt to humans from cows rather than bats. Indeed, observers of the 1889 pandemic noted a higher frequency of effects on the central nervous system than was typical for other influenza outbreaks. Such symptoms have been a marked feature of the current pandemic, with many people losing their sense of taste or smell, or suffering from brain swelling or immune-system attacks on nerve tissues.

If today’s pandemic is a virtual replay of the past, then the 1889 pandemic may predict our future. After further yearly outbreaks through 1895, humans acquired partial immunity to the virus. It turned from a killer into simply one virus among many, mostly causing the common cold. It’s still with us today.

Much of what happened in 1889 sounds eerily familiar. From a seemingly safe distance, U.S. newspapers reported on the rising death toll as the virus swept across Europe. After it reached the U.S., prominent public figures claimed it was nothing to worry about, just the common cold. Some health authorities suggested quinine as a treatment, leading medical specialists to warn about the dangers of self-medication. Those with “underlying conditions” such as heart disease or kidney problems were most at risk, and many cases of infection led rapidly to pneumonia.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-15/coronavirus-of-today-eerily-similar-to-1889-russian-flu-pandemic

A deadly coronavirus pandemic that people were treating with a malaria drug? That might seem sort of silly to us today, but people didn’t know as much back then. But they were trying to figure it all out. Take, for example, this newspaper article from 1891 (click on the hyperlink to read directly, if this is too small):

And, of course, people then had to be reminded that it was nothing new too:

Rich and poor, powerful or not, suffered alike from this disease. The Blaine family, which Truxtun was briefly a part of through marriage to Harriet Blaine, was no exception. Within two months, two of Harriet’s siblings, both in their 30s, suddenly passed from the disease.

Walker Blaine was the rising star of the family, died first with Harriet and another sister by his side, at his family’s house off Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. By all accounts, Walker was a likable man and probably his mother’s favorite child (judging from her letters) and her father’s favorite son (Harriet, his youngest, was widely said to be his favorite child). On January 23, 1890, the press reported:

If you read the article, you may have been confused as to why he was called both the second son and the eldest son of the family. That’s because the eldest son died in infancy. Life was tough back then and it was about to get even tougher for the Blaines. Gathering the family may not have been the best idea, because shortly thereafter, Alice Blaine Coppinger got the Russian “flu” then died. On February 8, 1890, the press reported:

People from Baltimore might recognize the name Cardinal Gibbons. Apparently, Alice converted to Catholicism when she married her husband, John Joseph Coppinger.

Things didn’t get much better for the Blaine family. It was reported that Secretary of States James G. Blaine had a bout with it in 1891, but survived:

But surviving the “flu” that killed two of his children probably was not a cause for a great celebration. And to make matters worse, in 1892, another offspring, his son Emmons Blaine, also died. But at least it wasn’t the “flu” this time:

Poor James G. Blaine didn’t have much left in him and passed away the next year at age 62. His cause of death was “unspecified”, so we’re putting Covid-19 on the death certificate. In addition to three kids dying in two years (a fourth died many years before in infancy), he was also dealing with the drama of another son’s nasty divorce and problems with his boss, President Harrison. Had he lived, he would have seen his daughter Harriet marry Truxtun Beale, who quickly abandoned her (although they later became friends). And if he had lived really long, he would have seen two of his grandchildren die within a month of each other in 1918, one from the Spanish flu. That’s right, pandemics weren’t done with the Blaines.

In September 1918, Walker Blaine Beale, son of Harriet and Truxtun, who was named after his uncle, Walker Blaine, died in combat in World War One. The family did not find out until October 1918, when Emmons Blaine, Jr., (whose father had died young in 1892) died from the Spanish flu. Walter Damrosch, a famous musician who married one of the Blaine sisters, wrote about it in his autobiography, My Musical Life:

So, don’t be so down about the current situation. History teaches us that things could always be worse. Coronavirus is not the end of the world. We will get through this, just as we always have.