Source: Global Times
Recently, india's new crown epidemic suddenly spiraled out of control, and the daily confirmed cases continued to set a new record, which shocked the world with the tragic situations such as the sharp increase in the death toll and the open cremation of corpses. However, this is not the first large-scale outbreak of plague in India. Because of natural and man-made disasters, this part of India has experienced terrible pandemics many times.
Pandemic 1918: 17 million deaths
The pandemic that began sweeping the world in 1918 killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million people worldwide, far more than the death toll of World War I. However, what few people know is that the place with the highest number of deaths from this pandemic is not Europe and the United States, which have been repeatedly mentioned in the media, but in distant India.
At the beginning of the 20th century, India was a poor colony that was plagued by repeated plagues, and the public health system had not yet been established, not only was Western medicine not yet widespread, but most Indians had to turn to the gods and native Ayurvedic medicine when they were sick. On 29 May 1918, near the end of World War I, a ship carrying the Indian Expeditionary Force arrived off the coast of Mumbai, loaded not only with supplies from the suzerainty of Great Britain, but also with strains of the deadly influenza virus brought from Europe. In June 1918, the first flu patients appeared in Mumbai. It wasn't long before influenza outbreaks broke out in the west, north and central parts of India.
Poor public health environment and unhealthy eating habits have exacerbated the spread of the pandemic. It was a time of rapid development for India's cotton textile industry, and Mumbai, the center of India's textile industry, attracted a large number of cheap laborers. Most of them are poor people of lower castes in India, often living in overcrowded slums, and some even live in dirty alleys, stables and warehouses. British Baron Tinshaw Manekji Petit, who was serving in India at the time, commented: "Mumbai is hidden in the depths of disease, dirt and degradation, and sanitary conditions are completely intolerable in a third-rate European city!" ”
Despite the British's disgust for India's filth, they were unwilling to spend any energy or money to reinvent this huge "viral petri dish." Soon, more and more patients had fever, limb pain, and bronchial inflammation in Mumbai, but the British colonial authorities thought it was just a general flu and did not take it seriously. However, the flu virus mutates unprepared throughout Indian society, with shorter incubation periods and higher fatality rates, with many people moving from infection to death in just one morning. At this point, the pandemic began to erupt in India.
During the spread of the epidemic, India's few hospitals have long been without beds, and even after requisitioning schools to expand beds, they are far from enough to accept patients, and most patients can only wait for death. Records at the time said that the dead bodies in the hospital were already full, and no one dared to carry the bodies out to make room for the dead, and the corpses were piled up there.
Not only hospitals, but also the streets of Indian cities are piled with corpses, almost every house has people weeping for the dead, and an atmosphere of terror and oppression pervades the whole of India.
The british colonial authorities' response to the pandemic was also outrageous. When the epidemic broke out, many colonial government officials ran to the mountains to avoid the epidemic in order to protect themselves, leaving the Indian people in the epidemic area to fend for themselves. Seeing that the epidemic situation is menacing, colonial officials who have no way to prevent the epidemic have also prescribed some strange prescriptions: gargling with potassium permanganate, using more disinfectants, and sleeping outdoors as much as possible... The result, of course, is not helpful. According to Indian folklore, the British secretly dismembered Indians in hospitals to extract the liquid medicine to protect the British from the plague. As a result, millions of Indians fled the cities and into the countryside in panic, bringing the epidemic to more places. The British colonial government launched strict controls, which further intensified ethnic contradictions. In this devastating plague, India's Mahatma Gandhi also nearly died. In 1919, Gandhi published Young India, he wrote: "In the face of such a terrible and catastrophic epidemic of infectious diseases, the government of any other civilized country will not be as inactive as the Government of India." ”
The Indian Health Commissioner's 1918 annual report described that "all the rivers were clogged with corpses." After a long period of soaking, the bodies have been soaked and begin to rot and stink." A 22-year-old Indian youth said desperately: "The Ganges is full of corpses because people don't have enough wood to cremate." Because of the epidemic, my family disappeared in the blink of an eye. ”
It wasn't until two years later that the pandemic slowly disappeared around the world, and the whole of India was already in mourning. According to India's later estimates, as many as 17 million people died from the flu, accounting for about 1/20 of India's total population at that time. India's most populous state alone has cost 3 million lives for the flu.
19th century: Cholera affects the world
The outside world generally believes that the large-scale spread of the new crown epidemic in India is inseparable from the practice of Indian people gathering in violation of the law to celebrate the "Big Pot Festival". In fact, the cholera epidemic that has been raging in India for a long time is also closely related to religious activities such as pilgrimage. However, the British colonial authorities turned a blind eye to this, and eventually led to tragedy and even endangered themselves.
Since ancient times, the Ganges Delta in India has been the endemic source of cholera, known as the "land of human cholera". In ancient times, the Indian continent had difficulty interacting with the outside world, and cholera spread extremely slowly outward. But with the advent of the Age of Discovery, the British opened not only the door to South Asia, but also the Pandora's box of cholera epidemics in the Ganges Delta.
It has to be said that cholera, an epidemic disease transmitted through the digestive system, has paid a heavy price for Indians who are obsessed with the Ganges. The 2,500-kilometer-long Ganges is regarded by Hindus as the holiest river. Every year from January to March, bathing festivals are held at the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims immerse themselves in the river and wash away the filth of their bodies and minds. Not only that, but Hindus also scattered the ashes of the dead into the Ganges. But from a hygienic point of view, the Ganges has become dirty and chaotic, becoming a breeding ground for Vibrio cholerae. As part of the pilgrimage, pilgrims drink raw water from the Ganges, which provides ideal conditions for the spread of Vibrio cholerae. The pilgrims' act of bringing this water to relatives and friends further contributed to the spread of cholera.
To make matters worse, the anomalous meteorological conditions that emerged in the 19th century created suitable conditions for the reproduction of Vibrio cholerae. In 1815, India received torrential rains, floods, and lost harvests, but in 1816 it was exceptionally hot and dry, and in 1817 it was raining heavily. A cholera outbreak that has lasted for years and spread across India has begun. In March 1817, cholera patients died at William Fortress in Calcutta, but the colonial authorities considered this an isolated incident and did not pay attention to it. In July of the same year, cholera broke out across Bangladesh province, and Calcutta was also affected. In just one month, 25,000 people were infected and 4,000 died. In 1818, a cholera epidemic spread to a wider area of India, where the mortality rate was as high as 7.5%.
In the following two years, the cholera epidemic continued to rage and extend abroad, and Ceylon, Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines and other "strokes" began, thus opening the prelude to the worldwide cholera pandemic. Once the Pandora's Box of Cholera is opened, it is not so easy to be closed. Since 1816, cholera outbreaks have occurred eight times around the world, affecting Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas and other places. The famous Russian musician Tchaikovsky was killed by the disease during the third global outbreak of cholera.
Faced with the devastating toll of the cholera epidemic, at the International Health Conference in Constantinople in 1866, countries adopted the theory of "contact contagion", which clearly stated that "pilgrimage is the most important factor among the many causes of the occurrence and spread of cholera epidemic in India". Surveys at the time showed that festivals and gatherings related to Indian pilgrimages, such as the "Sprinkler Festival", "Big Pot Festival" and "Little Pot Festival", were highly consistent with the cycle of multiple cholera outbreaks in the 19th century. With millions of people participating in these celebrations, cholera outbreaks can spread very quickly and kill large numbers of people.
For example, at the "Big Pot Festival" held in Hadwa in April 1867, the number of participants reached 3 million at its peak, but only 19 pilgrims received cholera treatment. The outbreak quickly spread along pilgrim routes to northern India, where about 250,000 people were infected with cholera that year, half of whom lost their lives. The International Health Conference urged the British side to strengthen the response to the cholera outbreak, but the colonial authorities "reversed the wheel". In the mid-19th century, British Indian health official Cunningham forced quarantine measures, established emergency isolation hospitals, and quarantined pilgrims at risk of cholera, for a time bringing the outbreak under control. However, due to political compromise and financial difficulties, in the first half of 1868, the British health authorities persuaded Cunningham to stop the quarantine of ships sailing from Mumbai. The results of this relaxation of epidemic prevention policies can be imagined. According to incomplete statistics, the cumulative number of Indians who have died of cholera over the years is as high as 38 million to 60 million.
1994: Massive plague scares away millions of people
Beginning in the Middle Ages, plague, a plague that has changed its color around the world, has broken out many times around the world in the name of the "Black Death". In the 1950s, the third world plague pandemic basically subsided. Many experts believe that with the development of modern medicine, the plague has entered the resting period from the active period. However, the plague outbreak in India in 1994 once again surprised experts.
The two states of Gujarat and Maharashtra in southwestern India are dotted with large shrub jungle ecosystems with frequent animal activity. Due to the rapid expansion of India's population and increasing food shortages, people have reclaimed and deforested jungles in order to obtain more food sources, resulting in a significant reduction in natural enemies of rats such as black-winged warblers, South Asian eagles and great bustards, coupled with the concentration of local slums and piles of garbage, the number of rats is increasing day by day.
In 1994, the global climate was abnormal, the vast areas of the northern hemisphere suffered rare high temperature weather, and the heat waves in the Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra were rolling, and the hot weather accelerated the breeding and spread of a large number of pneumonic plague bacteria. The plague first spread from rural Maharashtra. However, in the eyes of the Indian government at that time, the illness of low-caste rural people was not a major event worthy of attention. In late September 1994, the gujara state of Surat, near Mahashtra, was in the midst of a carnival celebrating Elephant Day. However, in the peaceful atmosphere, a creepy ghost has quietly infiltrated the city.
On 19 September, Surat Hospital suddenly received 30 patients in similar condition. They have high fevers, cough, sneezing and vomiting blood, and soon faint. Since then, another group of patients has been admitted to the hospital. On September 20, the first patient died in the hospital, followed by many more patients. The deceased was blackened and had wide-eyed eyes, and the pain was unbearable. Doctors tested blood samples and found that the patients were suffering from an epidemic in the countryside of mahashtra, the neighboring state, the plague.
After the disaster struck, Indian officials declared Surat into an "international public health emergency." On September 23, authorities in Surat ordered the closure of all schools, cinemas and parks, and large enterprises such as factories and banks shut down until the government lifted the warning. However, the medical conditions in Surat City are very poor, the medical equipment is very backward, the medical force is seriously insufficient, the drugs for the treatment of the disease are pitifully small, and the drugs such as tetracycline and sulfa needed to treat the plague are even more scarce. By October 4, more than 1,000 people had been admitted to hospitals for treatment and examination, and 50 of them had died of the disease.
The Indian government's handling of the plague outbreak was particularly disappointing, with no official information on how to respond to the outbreak and no proper guidance from the medical authorities on preventive measures. Some people blindly believe that the elimination of rats is beneficial to ending the epidemic, and began a large-scale rat eradication operation, which led to direct contact between rat fleas and humans, further expanding the plague epidemic.
In order to escape the terrible shadow of the plague, the inhabitants of Surat fled in a big way, and the Indian government had to send troops to control the situation. But it was too late, and because the blockade was not timely, hundreds of thousands of people fled their places of residence in panic. According to estimates by foreign agencies, about 500,000 people fled the city within four days of the outbreak being declared. They also brought plague germs and fears across India and caused millions of people to run away from home. In less than two weeks, plague outbreaks have been reported in many parts of India. In the capital, New Delhi alone, 770 people were admitted to hospitals, four of whom died.
The plague, which came to be known as Storm Surat, not only claimed the lives of many Indians, but also brought immeasurable social chaos and economic losses to Indian society. At that time, there was a large-scale rush of shopping funds in India, especially medicines and related medical equipment. More than 40 countries have taken decisive measures to temporarily suspend air and sea traffic with India, cancel flights to India, and conduct quarantine, disinfection and hygiene checks on flights, ships and cargo or passengers from India. At the time, it was reported that "the plague has made foreign investors suspicious of the investment climate in India." For this developing country that is eager to introduce foreign capital to develop its economy, it is undoubtedly a huge bad news..."