#COVID19 has been moving up the charts in terms of deaths. But how does it compare with the big three infectious killers: #HIV #TB and #Malaria? Mortality is a tricky think to estimate, and I will be using numbers from this paper:
thelancet.com/journals/lance…
According to @JHUSystems there have been around 815,000 #COVID19 deaths reported globally so far. This means #COVID19 has already passed #Malaria's 2017 total (619,000). However, malaria isn't everywhere and where there is malaria, it probably kills more people than COVID-19.
The year is not over! If the rest of the year sees the same average death rate as the years so far, we could see 1.3 million deaths by 2121. Beating out #HIV and #TB's 2017
totals. Making #COVID19 likely the deadliest pathogen of 2020.
who.int/news-room/fact…
Measuring death is complex. Some say #COVID19 deaths are overestimated because folks would have died anyway. But if we look at excess mortality numbers are actually higher! @nytimes estimates we crossed 200,000 deaths by Aug-13, 25% more than reported.
nytimes.com/interactive/20…
The ratio of under reporting to actual deaths will vary by country, but it means #COVID19 might be higher up the list of mortality than we think. Even if deaths stopped today, #COVID19 would already be the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA.
cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/l….
Still...#COVID19 deaths lag the big boys of cancer and heart disease. Hopefully this will not change, but is could. If 50% of the population were infected and 0.5% of these die, 750k would die in the US...more than the yearly heart disease total. Avoidable, but not impossible.
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