CoVid-19 Update 1

A pandemic growing exponentially means that the numbers change rapidly. China had about a dozen sick and no deaths in December, 2019, 547 cases and 17 deaths by 22 January, about 10,000 cases and 200 dead by the end of  January, 2020 and 80,000 infections and 5,000 dead by the end of February (but very few deaths and new infections after February).

And the world now have a number of deaths that is far more than than the usual range for January through May, and all due to CoViD-19

As the US news says, exponential growth meant that, if Trump had called for a lockdown just one week earlier, he might have saved 50,000 lives, and the European countries could have reduced their number of deaths by 50% if they'd acted a week earlier than they did.

CNN blames both Trump and China for the 100,000+ CoViD-19 deaths in the US. According to CNN, China should have known CoViD-19 was deadly on 14 January, but they didn't do anything before 20 January (except try to keep the infection quiet, to deny that the novel virus was contagious and deadly). And they had a big Chinese New Year banquet for 40,000 in Wuhan that resulted in about 40,000 infections, so China could have saved most of the 5,000 lives lost if they'd acted just 6 days sooner.

Blaming China is very popular in the West. And China is guilty of two things: they knew that wildlife markets were dangerous in 2003 after the SARS outbreak, and they said they were going to ban all wildlife markets, but they didn't (they finally got around to banning all wildlife markets this year, and this time, they almost certainly mean it, and if China is serious about banning wildlife markets, there won't be any in China ever again). And, of course, China definitely delayed at least 6 days after they should have known better (and they admit to 3 weeks). But all other charges are obviously false.

Compared to the Pandemic of 1918 - 1919, the Spanish flu, CoViD-19 is, so far, not much. Trying to look up the Spanish flu, death estimates range from 17 million to 200 million (in other words, historians don't have a clue how many actually died, but they're sure it was a lot: the median guess is about 50 million). The world population today is 4 times what it was in 1918, so, even if one takes the lowest estimate of deaths as 17 million, that would be equivalent to more than 60 million deceased now, and the current number of dead is less than 400,000 (but it's still going up).

Of course, history says the Spanish flu had 3 waves, and not many died in the first wave, it was the 2nd wave when most died, and we're still in the first wave of CoViD-19.

The second wave of the Spanish flu started in October, 1918, so we won't know how bad CoViD-19 is going to be before 2021. But if it's anything like the Spanish flu, we'll have more than 65 million dead before June, 2021, based on the lowest estimate of how many died from the Spanish flu and the increased population (but it's not looking like that's going to happen from our current perspective, since the rate at which people are dying is already down from its peak; and we're all hoping we'll have some effective medicines for CoViD-19 before 2021). However, if there's a second wave like the Spanish flu before we have any effective medicines ...