Putting six million lives lost to Covid into perspective

Last update: Wednesday 3/9/22 

On March 7, 2022 the NY Times reported that Johns Hopkins University estimated that the worldwide total of Covid deaths had reached six million persons. Adolescents might be discouraged by their certainty that this was the worst viral catastrophe in their brief lifetimes; but intelligent adults might take grim comfort in their vague recollection of being told when they themselves were youngsters about the so-called "Spanish flu" that demolished the lives of a far greater number of people back in 1918.  With the help of highly effective vaccines, highly protective N95 masks, and highly effective antiviral meds, none of which existed back in 1918, most of us, the vast majority, everywhere, will survive our current lesser catastrophe and soon get back to living normal lives ... but only if we demand better guidance from our pandemic managers. 

• "The pandemic’s official global toll surpasses 6 million known virus deaths.", Adeel Hassan, NY Times, 3/7/22 

Table: The following table contains five columns:

• Region (col 1) -- The world, USA, China, Japan, Germany, and Brazil
• Diseases (col 2) -- Influenza H1N1 in 2018 or Covid in 2022
• Population (col 3) -- First two rows = population in 1918; other rows in 2022
• Deaths (col 4) -- First two rows = deaths in 1918, other rows as of 2022
• Deaths per 100,000 (col 5) -- A crude measure of the severity of the pandemics = Population divided by deaths times 100,000

Sources: The data for population and deaths came from the following Webpages:

• Population (World and USA) = U.S. Census
• Population (Other countries) = CIA World Factbook
• Deaths (World and USA) = CDC
• Deaths (Other countries) = Johns Hopkins University
• All population and death entries are clickable hyperlinks to the Webpages from which the data was copied on 3/8/22.

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Comments:

• The 1918 influenza pandemic hit the entire world far more severely than the Covid-19 has hit so far. The 1918 death rate was 35 times as high as Covid's ... 2688 / 76 
  
  
• Some of this difference is due to our possession of vaccines, but much of it must be credited to China. Indeed China's population today (1.4 billion) is almost as large as the population of the entire world back in 1918 (1.8 billion). China only reported 6,923 deaths as of early 2022 vs. 50,000,000 for the entire world back in 1918. Much of China's success must be credited to its Zero Covid policy of enforcing severe 100 percent lockdowns on entire cities when a small numbers of cases have been detected.
  
  Such a severe lockdown policy would have been politically infeasible in any highly populous country in the world back in 1918, including China. Fast forward to today and we find that China is the only highly populous country with an autocratic government powerful enough to enforce such a policy for more than two years.
  
  But suppose China is only reporting a small fraction of its Covid deaths? This skepticism is sometimes posed by apologists for the poor performance of our own pandemic managers, apologists who honestly believe that no country could be that much better at managing a life or death situation than the U.S. because the U.S. has the best healthcare system in the world, right?
  
  So for the sake of argument let's suppose China is telling the rest of the world a Big Lie? How big? It would definitely have to be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, as Mary Poppins might say. The table shows that China's death rate is 0.5 per 100,000. So if China were only reporting one in every 100 deaths, its death rate would be 100 times as large = 100 times 0.5 = 50 ... The U.S. death rate = 266 would still be more than five times as large as China's. 
  
  Bottom line: Even if they are lying through their teeth, China's pandemic managers have done a far better job of preserving the lives of its citizens than ours have. We shouldn't be asking why are China's pandemic managers so good; we should be asking why are ours so bad? And why are our managers so much worse than Japan's, Germany's, and the managers of scores of other democratic countries not listed in the table?
  

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Links to related notes on this blog:  

• "The CDC's latest mask guidance, much better, but still not good enough", Last update: 3/6/22