A Merit Threat, Paranoid Over Reacting or Scary Movie 2020, "Chinese Virus" Ed.?

1. Heart Diseases
According to the WHO:
"Ischaemic heart disease and stroke are the world’s biggest killers, accounting for a combined 15.2 million deaths in 2016."


www.who.int/news-roo...causes-of-death

2. Cancer
"In 2017, 9.6 million people are estimated to have died from the various forms of cancer. Every sixth death in the world is due to cancer, making it the second leading cause of death – second only to cardiovascular diseases."

ourworldindata.org/cancer




3. H1N1

"Additionally, CDC estimated that 151,700-575,400 people worldwide died from (H1N1)pdm09 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated.**"

www.cdc.gov/flu/pand...1-pandemic.html

4. "Spanish Flu" of 1918

According to CDC, "The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919. In the United States, it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918. It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States."

www.cdc.gov/flu/pand...demic-h1n1.html


Now, how many has the covid-19 killed so far since October of 2019 in almost 5 months?

"COVID-19 has now infected more than 350,536 people, according to Johns Hopkins University, and killed at least 15,328 people."
CNBC reported:

www.cnbc.com/amp/202...sses-15000.html

While taking necessary precautions is certainly warranted, are stocking up toilet paper etc., stock market sell off and attacking Chinese looking Asians really the key to prepare for covid-19 or just another "Scary Movie 2020, 'Chinese Virus' Edition"?

Thanks for acknowledging attacking "anyone", including not excluding or singling out Chinese, China or Chinese government "is neither sensible nor morally justifiable." and correcting the time frame by about 2 months for covid-19, although there are a few reports that some of the thousands of the flu cases in the US starting back in last fall may have been relates to this virus, but they were never tested and many in the US are still not tested due to the expensive pricing and unavailability of the tests.


"After the first case of community spread in the United States was confirmed at UC (University of California) Davis Medical Center, those patients who died of influenza may have links with COVID-19," said Zhang Zuofeng, professor of epidemiology and associate dean for research at the School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles.

www.xinhuanet.com/en...c_138873568.htm


We don't have to only compare covid-19 with the general outbreak of 1918. That's a hundred years back. We can just looked at the item 3 listed in my write up, the latest gene outbreak in 2009.

The media and government handling of the 2009 outbreak was QUIET AND ALMOST NOTHING comparing with this time's global financial market sell offs, intercontinental travel bans, racial profiling and attacking online and offline. And
"Additionally, CDC estimated that 151,700-575,400 people worldwide died from (H1N1)pdm09 virus infection during the first year the virus circulated.**"

www.cdc.gov/flu/pand...1-pandemic.html

Even if we granted your fixious assumption and looked at the 1918 h1n1 over the term of a century, that would have seemed to be about "half a million per year, which even makes your cancer example more deadly" as you pointed out. Even under this vastly watered down assumption, half a million per year is still a much much greater figure than where we are at right now, 4 months into this covid-19 thing with only 15000 deaths.

Let me put half a million (500,000) in a year vs. 15,000 in 4 months side by side for you. This is not considering the total population of the world was estimated at only about 1.8 billion in 1918, while it's on its way to 80 billion, today.

ourworldindata.org/s...emic-in-history

In fact this article further analyzed and stated:

"Based on this, the low estimate of 17.4 million deaths by Spreeuwenberg et al. (2018) implies that the Spanish flu killed almost 1% (0.95%) of the world population.9

If we rely on the estimate of 50 million deaths published by Johnson and Mueller, it implies that the Spanish flu killed 2.7% of the world population."

2.7% of today's world population would be around 216 million, which is about 14400 times of 15000, which is where we are at now.

Would like to correct a typo

Let me put half a million (500,000) in a year vs. 15,000 in 4 months side by side for you. This is not considering the total population of the world was estimated at only about 1.8 billion in 1918, while it's on its way to 8* billion, today.


Well, just pointing out the facts, if we were unlucky enough to have 216 million (almost the whole US population) people dead from covid-19, that would have only matched the scale at the total number of deaths level with the "Spanish Flu" of 1918. This is still under this vastly watered down assumption of spreading the total number of deaths from "Spanish Flu" over the term of a century (1918-2018).


Yet a century later, not only the human race survived, but also the total population grew from 1.8 billion to nearly 8 billion.


What seems to be the basis for all the panic now?

tenshi wrote:

CNM wrote: Let me put half a million (500,000) in a year vs. 15,000 in 4 months side by side for you.

Reminder: You need to calculate the exponential function. If you compare 12 month with 4 month, your logic is flawed. Please either break down the year logarithmically to 4 month, or expand the 4 month exponentially to 12 month. You cannot regress linearly!

True but how can you model this "exponential" growth is up in the air and anyone's guess, while you don't know the growth rate under all the variable circumstances? Additionally, even this curve you put up for every user to see seems to acknowledge that the rate of growth plateaus after all the human medical/preventative involvement after a while. It is not an ever growing exponentially model.

tenshi wrote: Please don’t twist my words to your comfort. You were the one who started comparing different types of death scenarios with largely different time scales in your very first post.

With respect to your concerns w.r.t. to the math, please refer back to the links I provided in the first reply. If you don’t like reading, just watch the Youtube video from Numberphile.

Look, not sure why you felt that I "twisted" your words. Please clarify, if you want.

As for the maths, I didn't have time to read through all the links you provided yet. I did watch a good portion of the video you posted up there.

The number 1 and foremost thing I noticed from this video is that it's actually modeling and talking about the number of people "infected", "susceptible", "recovered", not the total number of deaths. So, the model built in this video is not so relevant to what we are discussing here, which is the total number of deaths. The number of deaths would depend on many more other variables, which the model in the video didn't attempt to address, unless I'm missing something from the video?

In fact, while the number of "infected" could experience a quasi exponential increase period at the onset of the outbreak coupled with low awareness and poor public health condition in certain areas of the world, the number of deaths shouldn't match such quasi exponential increase, unless for some reason the fatality rate of the virus keeps as high as nearly 100% over a long period of time. Public health measures at any scale as well as the immune capabilities of humans should flatten out the fatality rates and the total number of deaths curve.