11-20-2020, 07:40 PM
There are a lot of positives.
Care has improved drastically since 1918. Mortality would be a lot worse if we were limited to 1918 healthcare. Hell, care for COVID-19 has improved dramatically since March 2020.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-0...39901770=1
As you note, there is a strong age and comorbidity gradient with mortality. All deaths are tragic, so you don't want to make light of the fact, but the reaction would rightly be much different if mortality were highest amongst children, or even, as in 1918, among young adults.
Signs are pointing towards us being able to deploy a vaccine to the most vulnerable by the end of the year, and to the broader population starting next spring. Cases and deaths will decline quickly as the population, especially the most at risk, get a vaccine.
But we should not minimize the disease either. COVID-19 would probably infect 1/3 or more of the world population by the time its through were it not for the imminent arrival of vaccine. At that point we'd be talking about 500,000 to 1 million deaths in the US alone and maybe 12 million deaths worldwide. That's less as a percentage of the population than the 1918 flu pandemic, but certainly enough to qualify as the worst pandemic since the 1918 flu pandemic.
To put things into perspective, at the peak of polio in 1952, there were 57,628 reported cases and 3,145 deaths. This is much worse than polio.
BC
Care has improved drastically since 1918. Mortality would be a lot worse if we were limited to 1918 healthcare. Hell, care for COVID-19 has improved dramatically since March 2020.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-0...39901770=1
As you note, there is a strong age and comorbidity gradient with mortality. All deaths are tragic, so you don't want to make light of the fact, but the reaction would rightly be much different if mortality were highest amongst children, or even, as in 1918, among young adults.
Signs are pointing towards us being able to deploy a vaccine to the most vulnerable by the end of the year, and to the broader population starting next spring. Cases and deaths will decline quickly as the population, especially the most at risk, get a vaccine.
But we should not minimize the disease either. COVID-19 would probably infect 1/3 or more of the world population by the time its through were it not for the imminent arrival of vaccine. At that point we'd be talking about 500,000 to 1 million deaths in the US alone and maybe 12 million deaths worldwide. That's less as a percentage of the population than the 1918 flu pandemic, but certainly enough to qualify as the worst pandemic since the 1918 flu pandemic.
To put things into perspective, at the peak of polio in 1952, there were 57,628 reported cases and 3,145 deaths. This is much worse than polio.
BC