A killer virus?

by Pseud O'Nym

Yesterday the BBC carried the news that,

 

More than 500,000 people worldwide have now lost their lives as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University in the US.

 Since the virus emerged in China late last year, there have been more than 10 million cases, Johns Hopkins reports.

You know what I’m going to write about that, don’t you? Of course you do, my blog has been nothing if consistent in pointing out that for a supposed killer disease, coronavirus isn’t killing that many people. I get that some people mind find this the wrong way to interpret the numbers but then those are the sort of people who move their lips when they read, but I’m working on the assumption that whoever reads my blog is a sentient adult capable of critical analysis.

10 million cases resulting in 500,000 deaths, depending on how you look at it means either a 5% chance of death, or a 95% chance of survival.

Mmm, a killer disease with a 95% of survival rate? Really?

And, of course, we know that a billion a thousand million, so therefore we know that half a million deaths equals 0.05% of a billion. Being even more brutal, given that the world population stands at around 7 billions, those 500,000 deaths become an even smaller percentage still. And it’s taken a while to get even to that. Obviously those deaths are a personal tragedy for the loved ones of the deceased but of it had taken weeks to get to this figure, not nearly six months, then I’d be taking things with the seriousness it would deserve.

But I can’t, because the numbers don’t tell me I should.