Hey, that was me! Go me!
Think I probably said this for hyperbole (welcome to a world of media propaganda and misdirection!).
So by way of correction, because I'm fully aware that each of us live in our own media bubbles (myself, I'm a bbc news guy because it seems to be the most reliable source in the UK) and because I'm genuinely interested in researched opinion that's contrary to my own.
Here are the current figures, as of yesterday, from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (
https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/geographical-distribution-2019-ncov-cases)
Total declared world wide cases:
3 713 796
Total declared world wide deaths:
263 288
This range is from December 31st to 7th of May, which is 129 days, this results in a average of
2041 deaths per day world wide.
The current death rate based on declared cases and deaths is approximately
7.1%
The highest number of deaths world-wide was on 16th of April. This is the
only single day to top 10,000 reported deaths. And this was not by many.
According to wikipedia (yep, I know, but it's easily accessible and with the current media purge on lies around COVID19 I'm happy to go with it for this) COVID19 is approximately the 50th most deadly disease but, to put it in perspective, Spanish Flu is ranked at 53 with a (greater than) 2.5% mortality rate. COVID19 has a 7.03% mortality rate (this is from May 2nd, my figure above is based on yesterday).
Approximately 17-50 million people died of Spanish Flu. The world population in 1918 was under 2 billion people and approximately 500 million of them were confirmed as carrying the disease. The current world population is 7.8billion people.
The
CDC estimates that there have been 24,000 and 62,000 Flu deaths in the US between October 1 2019 and April 4 2020. (186 days)
Between 4th of March and today there have been 76,537 confirmed deaths of (or related to) COVID19 in the USA. (65 days)
Things to bare in mind:
- Different Countries have different definitions and capacities for testing and death reporting - the UK, until recently, was only counting hospital deaths for example.
- People will manipulate reporting to suit their narrative: i.e there are no easily accessible facts on reputable sources declaring "survival" or "recovered" numbers.
- The whole world has been in lockdown, slowing the spread of the disease.
So, "facts" out of the way, my personal take: Yes, it's just another flu, but one that is far more deadly than the regular strain. This is why it's such a problem, flu spreads easily and this is deadly.
The current world population is currently around 4 times that of 1918. Which means people are physically closer together, which aids transmission.
Sure, in theory I've got a 92.*whatever*% chance of surviving based on just the current figures. But my parents are old and I have children. I don't want to take or expose them to the risk. Especially given that we don't yet have full accurate figures on just how deadly this is (and probably never will based on particular governments tendancies towards propaganda rather than transparancy).
The death and infection rates may be slowing worldwide at the moment but that's because the vast majority of people have been staying at home or in proper lockdowns - we don't know what's going to happen when lockdowns are lifted but the obvious conclusion is that, as cases are still being confirmed now, that the infection rates will rise again as people start venturing out.
@Stan Smith - yes, I'd like you to bring some logic to the thread, not to cause an argument, but because you seem to not care about this too much and because you back your arguments up with research.
