Would Covid-19 have been detected 30+ years ago?

[DollyStardust]

Do you think if Covid 19 had hit 30 years ago it would have been detected? Or would people have thought it was a flu? Wondering what the technology that detected it actually came to exist!

Have a read of the book 'pandemic century'- covers lots of things like this and truly fascinating.

@Sowhatifiam

how old are you, OP? 30 years ago was hardly the dark ages. I appreciate that the internet has come a long way in that time, but the earth was still spinning without it.

@Sowhatifiam I thought that too. I graduated in 1986...36 years ago from medical School and we definitely had loads of teaching on viruses...

Yes. We had all the technology and methods available - just sequencing was a lot slower. More automation now speeds things up enormously. We were working on flu, HCV, and HIV at that time, and at a molecular/sequence level. Internet speeds up information sharing

Not an answer to your question but MRNA technology has only existed for just over a decade so if it were detected 30 years ago - I doubt a vaccine would have been developed and distributed in less than a year like it was in 2020.

This article gives an interesting perspective comparing the 1918 pandemic with Covid eu.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/08/13/covid-19-worse-new-york-spanish-flu-study/3360542001/ .

Apparently, in the 1918 pandemic the death rate tripled from what it had been previously (much higher than our modern base rate). In the worst period in New York during Covid, it quadrupled. Given what it was like in Italy / New York at its worst even with lockdowns, I think there would have been some very difficult decisions 30 years ago if there was no hope of a vaccine.

The first vaccine released - The AZ one, isn't a mRNA and that kind of vector-based technology was around in the nineties - initial admitedly but that is what my friend was working on in his phd. However there were already lots of traditional vaccines with live or attenuated viruses used so I am sure efforts would have gone along that route, though possibly have taken longer.

@DollyStardust

Perhaps my OP wasn't as clear as it could be, I'm finding it hard to explain myself now! Just wondering what are the chances we had undetected pandemics or pandemics that were found much later and at what point historically, Covid 19 could have been missed.

It would not have been missed at any point in history.