Dear Ones,

I was wondering what the future curve of COVID mortality might look like. I found a curve for deaths for the Spanish flu epidemic, which I will attach here. It was ‘W’ shaped, with two small upticks and a big one in the middle …

Image: “Three pandemic waves: weekly combined influenza and pneumonia mortality, United Kingdom, 1918–1919,” by JK Taubenberger and DM Morens, from Citation: “1918 Influenza: The Mother of All Pandemics,” Emerg Infect Dis. 2006;12(1):15-22., CC BY … in English Wikipedia … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#/media/File:1918_spanish_flu_waves.gif … public domain … DESCRIPTION: Three waves of death during the pandemic: weekly combined influenza and pneumonia mortality, United Kingdom, 1918–1919. The waves were broadly the same globally.

Image: “Three pandemic waves: weekly combined influenza and pneumonia mortality, United Kingdom, 1918–1919,” by JK Taubenberger and DM Morens, from Citation: “1918 Influenza: The Mother of All Pandemics,” Emerg Infect Dis. 2006;12(1):15-22., CC BY … in English Wikipedia … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#/media/File:1918_spanish_flu_waves.gif … public domain … DESCRIPTION: Three waves of death during the pandemic: weekly combined influenza and pneumonia mortality, United Kingdom, 1918–1919. The waves were broadly the same globally.

I see the COVID-19 death curve so far … in a way … resembles the first two upticks of the Spanish flu curve … which is to say, a small uptick, followed after some months by the current, much larger, 3-peaked uptick. That is the red line in this graph …

Image: “NCHS Mortality Reporting System: Pneumonia, Influenza and COVID-19 (PIC) Mortality, United States, October 2, 2016 – January 16, 2021,” in CDC … https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/01222021/nchs-mortality-report.html … public domain … DESCRIPTION: The red line represents the weekly mortality rate.

Image: “NCHS Mortality Reporting System: Pneumonia, Influenza and COVID-19 (PIC) Mortality, United States, October 2, 2016 – January 16, 2021,” in CDC … https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/01222021/nchs-mortality-report.html … public domain …

DESCRIPTION: The red line represents the weekly mortality rate.

I thought the future of the curve for COVID deaths might resemble the final small uptick of the Spanish flu mortality curve … in which case we might see a decline in COVID deaths for March and April 2021 or so, and then an uptick lower than the current one, and then with luck, an end to the COVID pandemic.

As to the issue of lack of efficacy of the current COVID vaccines with the new COVID strains, I am not sure that would aversely influence my prediction that the resolution of the COVID mortality chart may occur after only one smaller chart uptick this year. That is because of the placebo effect (or possibly the positive health effect of decreased pathogen load) of vaccines, which might be illustrated as follows …

A vaccine was created for the Spanish flu long years ago, but due to the limitations of microscopic resolution in the early 1900s, the vaccine targeted a bacillus rather than a virus … the bacillus being quite a lot larger than the virus, and thus visible through the microscopy of the day.

Although the ‘Spanish flu vaccine’ did not prevent death through Spanish flu, yet the epidemic in the early 1900s ended after the vaccination campaign.

In the same way, I am guessing … whether through the placebo effect or through an effect of decreased pathogen load (in this case, more narrowly labeled ‘viral load’) … the COVID flu epidemic may end after the COVID vaccination campaign has been fully implemented.

(By the by, it seems to me that for placebo effect or the positive health effect of decreased viral load, the regular flu shot might have worked as well as the COVID vaccine, and might have made a far cheaper and speedier end to the pandemic, had it been promoted as a “COVID plus regular flu” vaccine.)

In love, light and joy,
Alice B. Clagett
I Am of the Stars

Written and published on 14 February 2021; revised on 12 April 2023

I note that the medical term for one of the symptoms of both Spanish flu and moderate to severe COVID-19 is ‘prostration’, which means marked loss of strength, or physical exhaustion.
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community health, COVID, COVID-19, viral load, pathogen load, placebo effect,