Covid VS Cholera

Perhaps like me you have wondered how our descendants will view the Covid-19 pandemic. In the future, people will probably say that it must have been frightening, and they will wonder how on earth we coped.

I think that it’s given each of us a more personal insight into how our ancestors must have felt during other pandemics in the past such as the Black Death of 1346–53, and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918–20. Although separated by centuries, we are fellow humans and have shared the same agonies of losing loved ones, worrying if we might be next, and wondering when life will return to normal. In this article, I’d like to compare our modern experience of Covid-19 with cholera, the great pandemic of the 19th century.

I should say to begin with that there are some obvious differences. Not least is the fact that the cholera pandemic reached the UK as not one, but four waves in 1831–2, 1848–9, 1853–4 and 1866. Another contrast is that cholera is caused by bacteria, whereas Covid-19 is a viral illness. Cholera spreads mainly when people drink water contaminated with the faeces of others who have the infection, whereas Covid-19