I am incredibly concerned about the fact that our country is not learning from history and repeating mistakes from pandemics in the past. I am particularly concerned that the Covid-19 pandemic has so many parallels to the Spanish Flu that occurred in 1918. Our president, Donald Trump has made a fool of our country. In Trevor Noah’s video, we are shown clips of him making fun of the corona virus constantly and disregarding the hundreds of thousands of deaths in America that have stemmed from the virus. Trump is compared to President Woodrow Wilson in the video because he is making many of the same mistakes Wilson did while he was president during the Spanish Flu.
It is incredibly embarrassing that over 100 years later our world is using the same failed technologies that it did in the nineteenth century to fight a deadly flu. You would think that we would have had many more advancements since then. Another cause of concern I have from these sources is that the message of how deadly the virus is, is not conveyed. Our president has downplayed the severity of the virus which has resulted in many people becoming more relaxed with social distancing and mask wearing. Not wearing a mask and distancing yourself from others will certainly bring your chances of exposure to the virus substantially higher. Overall, this video really opened my eyes to how concerning the parallels are between the spanish flu and covid-19 and that we are not learning from our past mistakes to make for a safer and healthier world.
I was also very concerned after learning about all the parallels between the Spanish Flu and the coronavirus because it is so evident that we are not learning from past mistakes. Even now it should be easier to make decisions regarding coronavirus considering all the new scientific advancements that we didn’t have a hundred years ago.
I was also very surprised and concerned by the amount of similarities and the parallels between the Spanish flu in 1918 and Covid-19. I realized that the Spanish flu 100 years ago and it is upsetting that there have been no changes or advancements to prevent what is happening today. The similar types of leadership are also very concerning because it created a lot of harm back then and it is doing the same today.
One would think that we could actually learn from our mistakes, but as we can see that is completely different. We need to learn from our past to better understand the world we live in. It is crazy that there are so many similarities between the Spanish flu and COVID-19.
I agree that the shocking part of the comparison between the two pandemics is how the responses did not change. The mismanagement of the government has allowed COVID 19 to be on the same level as the Spanish Flu. Trump and Wilson’s response were very similar which was to discredit the virus. Trump has made the same mistakes as Wilson instead of learning from history.
While it is certainly embarrassing that we did learn much over the past 100 years, I believe it was inevitable that we would overlook the threat of a pandemic. In the western world, illness rarely enters our stream of news. Since we believed we could beat any illness, there was no need for anyone to worry or study pandemics — we thought. I believe that it is more disappointing that we did not use the Spanish Flu as a guide for easing the effects of Covid earlier. I think if we had immediately drawn our response from another pandemic — and actually have respected that history — we could have done a better job at controlling COVID-19.