COVID-19 Pandemic in Comparison

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COVID-19 Pandemic in Comparison

1aspirit
aug 26, 2020, 7:57 pm

I thought we could use a different thread than "Wuhan Virus: Is this the big one?" for talking about the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic compared to other pandemics or events.

To start with, here's an article from Bloomberg Opinion about The Once-in-a-Century Impact of Covid-19 Deaths: "The rise in mortality rates in the U.S. this year will likely be the worst since the 1918 influenza pandemic. In New York City, it may beat even that."

2aspirit
aug 26, 2020, 8:13 pm

For continued reference, here's Our World in Data's Excess mortality from the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).

Excess mortality is a term used in epidemiology and public health that refers to the number of deaths above and beyond what we would have expected to see under ‘normal’ conditions. It is used to measure the mortality impact of a crisis when not all causes of death are known. We have previously written about excess mortality in the context of the death rates of young girls and in famines.

Here we are discussing it in the context of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).


3Rood
aug 27, 2020, 10:45 pm

What are you talking about. It's totally under control. There's just one person coming in from China.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/22/trump-on-coronavirus-from-china-we-have-it-total...

4aspirit
aug 28, 2020, 9:11 am

>3 Rood: (ouch!) Unfortunately, that is an important note about the official United States response. Thank you.

This thread is for more than what's happened in one or two countries, but as I was thinking about it, I've grabbed a link to a page putting some of the viral spread and governmental responses in perspective.

"Five months in: A timeline of how COVID-19 has unfolded in the US" (USA Today in April)

5clamairy
jul 26, 2021, 9:09 pm

If anyone is interested in more details on how the US botched their Covid response the book The Premonition: A Pandemic Story is quite good. It's depressing as hell, but fascinating.

6Macumbeira
jul 31, 2021, 3:51 am

Just finished Inferno, so I am ok

7aspirit
jul 31, 2021, 8:59 pm

>6 Macumbeira: Which Inferno?

8Meredy
aug 1, 2021, 2:22 pm

The major difference with covid-19 compared with previous epidemics and pandemics and plagues is simply that it is taking place in the electronic age.

Our experience of life, the universe, and everything is inextricably intertwined with the effects of technology-based media, in particular, and not just the role of high tech in all other parts of our lives. Even if a person uses no computer technology and doesn't watch television, it's inescapable because it affects everybody around them.

Granted the probable bias of many an old-style newspaper or broadside, they had nothing like the impact of media today. The internet and broadcast media amplify, skew, distort, and reinforce our perceptions to such an extent that it is increasingly difficult to know when we're grasping things realistically. No hard, objective reality of "Bring out your dead!" called from the carts rolling through a medieval street. Now it's all about which disembodied talking head on a screen you want to believe and what kind of pressure you feel from your neighbors.

This has not improved our ability to deal with covid.

9stellarexplorer
Redigerat: nov 14, 2021, 12:42 am

>8 Meredy: Well said

10aspirit
sep 5, 2022, 5:08 pm

I think the group description changed to emphasize history. Maybe I missed that before. This topic is certainly history in-the-making, however.

Filmed in 21 countries, the panoramic story of the coronavirus pandemic’s first year as seen through the eyes of people all across the world.

Drawing on extensive personal and local footage, “The Virus That Shook the World” tells the story of people across the globe who have experienced the pandemic and its consequences in different ways — from a food blogger in Wuhan, China; to a filmmaker in a remote Indigenous village in Brazil; to a musician and puppeteer in Delhi, India.

From series director James Bluemel and series producer Alice Henley, the two-part special shows how the impacts of the disease that has {at the time of the video series' release in April 2021} killed more than 3 million people have overlapped and differed across cultures, races, faiths and privilege; how various governments have responded; and how the pandemic has exposed existing inequities and social problems.

The Virus That Shook The World, Part One (full documentary) | FRONTLINE | 1:53:48
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eLB8EXAMVgQ

The Virus That Shook The World, Part Two (full documentary) | FRONTLINE | 53:17
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-3ou4Jy2T2o

Related Reading

How We Live Now: Scenes from the Pandemic (Aug 2020) by Bill Hayes

Voices from the Pandemic: Americans Tell Their Stories of Crisis, Courage and Resilience (Sep 2021) by Eli Saslow

Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic (Apr 2022) anthology of poetry

11aspirit
sep 5, 2022, 5:20 pm

Here's a COVID-19 snapshot for the world today.

Cases: 610,506,562

Deaths: 6,504,493

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The coronavirus COVID-19 is affecting 228 countries and territories.

At this point, instead of the flu epidemic(s) of 1918+ that was frequently brought up in the first two years, I mostly see the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the ongoing AIDS/HIV pandemic that started 40 years ago.

12stellarexplorer
sep 5, 2022, 10:42 pm

>10 aspirit: The actual description hasn’t changed, but I’ve always had the idea that the underlying concept of this group is large enough to encompass almost any “big picture” topic -