Is this the first time we have had the the technology to fight off a widespread pandemic?

The Quarantine Zone
1

Got my 2nd dose of the Pfizer vaccine today! While I was waiting for my turn
I started to wonder if this is the first time in history where there has been a
pandemic that spread quickly across the globe and we had the tools to fight it.

The 1918 Spanish flu went worldwide but they didn’t have the technology to fight
it. The HIV/AIDS but the virus spread much more slowly than the Corona virus
but we still don’t have a complete cure. Ebola, MERS, SARS were caught before
they became widespread and killed a large number of people.

So, is this the first time we have been able to fight off a pandemic that quickly
went global? Hope you are all doing well and I thank you for your answers.

2

No. Antibiotics mean that this won’t happen again:

3

Yes, antibiotics would prevent the black plague from breaking out again but
what about a pandemic that is all ready in progress? Is this the first time
we have the tools to fight off an ongoing pandemic?

4

So the restrictions to your question are - it must be something where we do not initially have the tools to stop it, so the disease spreads; then we do develop the tools to stop it.

So really your question is about the technology to react quickly to develop treatments for novel viruses.

5

Many years ago there was something about determining the greatest invention of all time, and experts (et al?) chose the printing press. It’s great to discover a solution to a problem, but being able to disseminate that information is even bigger (I think the logic went).

These days, it’s the internet. The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff, though. E.g. Trump said hydroxychloraquine (sp?) seemed promising.

6

“So really your question is about the technology to react quickly to develop treatments for novel viruses.”

Yes, I guess that is what I am aiming for. A new disease breaks out and spreads
worldwide, we initially don’t have the cure but with our modern technology we can
come up with a cure in a relatively short time. I can’t recall if we have been able
to do this in the past.

7

Certainly not this fast: BRIEFING Moderna’s groundbreaking coronavirus vaccine was designed in just 2 days

8

Not just the speed of the vaccine development itself, but that was made possible in part by the entire gene sequence of the virus being quickly determined and disseminated.

9

Strictly speaking, no. We’ve had the technology to fight off polio and smallpox pandemics for quite some time now.