By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
SvennoJ on 28 February 2020
Edit Thread
Mar1217 said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

1) You are right that it isn't nearly as bad as the black plague or can it get anything close to that.

2) Coronavirus is actually much more deadly that the flu though.

It's somewhere in between the flu and the black plague.  There is a lot of room in between those things.

The Black Plague went on to kill about 2/3 of the European population.

Influenza yearly infects more than 600K people during seasonal flu and kills approx. 60K-70K yearly.

I'd say the Corona virus is more akin to the last flu pandemic we had in 2009-2010.

That one went out to kill between 280K-500K people (depending on sources).

I'd say we are looking at similar margins here.

Like I said, the most unluckiest fact about this pandemic was that it declared itself in a more so highly dense population which would obviously spread out the virus more effectively than let's say ... the Ebola which remained in Africa for most of it's prime.

The black plague killed 25 million people over several centuries. The world population was less than half a billion though, so quite severe death rates. There was no ICU nor any hospitals of course.

Estimates put the total infection rate at between 40% to 70% of the world population when it turns pandemic. Flu affects 5% to 20% of people each year.
Looking at the Corvid-19 numbers about 5% of those infected get seriously ill, for a long time, needing hospital care. Still over half of those will survive (with the proper care). However do we have the capacity to hospitalize 5% of 40% of 7.7 billion, over 150 million people? No.

It's loose in Europe now, containment seems to have failed. It will still be months until it reaches its peak and to slow it down would mean drastic measure like those in China, isolating entire cities and regions.

We have yearly flu shots nowadays to slow influenza down (still 60k deaths a year, of course that includes a lot of older people as well. We all die of something eventually)

To make a comparison using the US


If Covid-19 gets to run lose like the flu:
Lower estimate: 40% of 327 million get sick, 130 million. 5% need hospital care (based on Diamond Princess) 6.5 million. 2% die, 2.6 million.
Upper estimate: 70% of 327 million get sick, 229 million, 10% need hospital care (based on China) 23 million, 3.4% die, 7.8 million.

That's for round one. If it comes around again like the flu more casualties can happen.

However we'll need at least 8 times the hospital beds compared to the flu.