COVID-19 rages on. As I write this, there are over 1,600 confirmed cases here in the commonwealth. The glimmer of sunlight emerging from the weight of this ubiquitous burden as of March 26: 16,441 of the 18,128 COVID-19 tests in Pennsylvania turned out negative.
It is clear this highly infectious virus has earned the notorious moniker of pandemic. In an effort to make sense of it all, many readers have turned to articles about past influenza outbreaks, such as the Spanish flu of 1919 or the more recent 2009 H1N1 crisis that infected 61 million people across the globe.
There was an epidemic that all of this reminds me of, one that plagued Britain about 20 years ago, with its most pernicious impact descending upon Scotland. And yours truly was residing there at the time, caught it, and survived that deadly bug.
Before getting into my personal plight with that flu in the year 2000, let’s look at some background on that epidemic.
As a historian by training, I was quickly reminded of the irony of the disease hitting Scotland so hard. Why? The term flu, or influenza, has Scottish origins. As Dorothea Singer wrote 70 years ago in an Annals of Science article, a Scotsman, Dr. John Pringle, (1707-82), close friend of Benjamin Franklin, is credited with first coining the term influenza in 1758.
One BBC headline from January 2000 read: “Flu pushes NHS to breaking point.” This is all-the-more powerful commentary when one notes the sheer size and resources of the National Health Service.
Created in 1948, the NHS is the umbrella name for four health care systems: NHS England, NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland. Most notably, the NHS is the largest employer in Queen Elizabeth’s realm. The NHS boasts 1.5 million employees, with about 160,000 of them in Scotland. Yes, wee Scotland, with a population of about 5.4 million, has one employer that large.
Around the time of the outbreak, the population of Scotland was about 5 million and NHS Scotland employed about 130,000 people.
Either way, the NHS is and was also the largest employer in all of Europe and is currently fifth largest in the world, private or public.
Despite this size, they had difficulty dealing with the flu epidemic of 2000.
Another column by the BBC, “Flu ravages Scotland,” pointed out that, by mid-January of 2000, there were about 800 cases per 100,000 people in Scotland. Put into perspective: There are currently about 110 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents in the U.S. as I write this article.
The 2000 flu was deadly to some, harmful to more. There were 23,379 deaths recorded in winter 1999-2000 for Scotland, a number not surpassed for 15 years. That 2000 fatality rate exceeded the average winter deaths number by 4,719.
That is not to say COVID-19 is not a highly contagious virus and that the worst may be to come. In Italy, the hardest hit country per capita so far, we are looking at an infection rate of 5,900 per 100,000 people.
My situation? Well, I recall watching BBC news one evening to learn about the case of youth rugby player David Short. A 17-year-old in in his physical prime, he started showing “flu-like symptoms” and eventually died. As I recall, I began feeling ill that very evening. My fever spiked to 104.5 and I was bedridden for about two weeks, losing over 20 pounds in the first 10 days.
One day during that wretched time, a member of the cleaning staff for the on-campus housing at the University of Edinburgh, where I was studying and, for the time, convalescing, knocked on my door. As she entered my room with her own key, I recall the blurry image of her head peaking around the doorway and into the room.
In a rather loud, contralto, Scottish brogue, she queried, “Are you alive there, love?” Perhaps wanting to fit in, in my fuzzy state, I responded, “Aye. Ta.”
I had no roommate, no one to check in on me, and apparently I had been asleep for over a day. It’s a good thing she entered the room that day. Who knows how my dehydrated self would have otherwise recovered.
Stay safe.
Christopher Brooks is a professor of history at East Stroudsburg University.
