The ravages of the new coronavirus compared to other deadly viruses throughout history

The balance of the pandemic of coronavirus exceeded the threshold of three million deaths, and is much higher than that of most viral epidemics of the 20th and 21st centuries, with notable exceptions such as the terrible “Spanish flu” and AIDS.

Outside of epidemics, these three million deaths represent three times the balance of the Iran-Iraq war, 2,000 times the balance of the sinking of the Titanic or even equal to the total Armenian population.

Flu epidemics

Covid-19 has already caused more deaths than most flu epidemics of the 20th and 21st centuries.

In 2009, influenza A (H1N1), called “swine”, officially caused 18,500 deaths. But this balance was later revised upwards by the medical journal The Lancet, which placed it between 151,700 and 575,400 deaths, an assessment comparable to that of seasonal flu, which claims between 290,000 and 650,000 lives per year according to the WHO.

In the 20th century, two major influenza pandemics linked to new viruses, the 1957-58 – called “Asian” – and the 1968-70 – “Hong Kong flu” – each caused around one million deaths. , according to a posteriori calculations.

The great flu of 1918-1919, called “Spanish”, killed 50 million people, according to some estimates.

Other viral epidemics

The provisional balance of the new coronavirus is already much higher than that of Ebola.

Since 1976, Ebola has caused about 15,000 deaths, exclusively in Africa. This virus is more lethal than Sars-Cov-2 (approximately 50% of patients die from it, according to the WHO), but much less contagious.

AIDS, for which there is still no effective vaccine 50 years after its appearance, has killed almost 33 million people, that is, 11 times more than COVID-19, which is much more recent.

Thanks to the widespread use of antiretroviral therapies, the annual number of AIDS victims has decreased from the peak recorded in 2004 (1.7 million deaths). In 2019, the death toll was 690,000, according to UNAIDS.

Three million represent

To better understand the balance of the current pandemic, this figure of three million represents slightly more than the population of Jamaica, Armenia or Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso.

It is also three times the balance of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), or 2,000 times that of the sinking of the Titanic (1,500 dead).

It is also 375 times the capacity of the Symphony of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship, which can accommodate 8,000 people.

In the last month, more than 10,000 people have died every day from covid-19, it is the same number of children who die of hunger daily in the world, according to the UN.

It is also more than three times the result of the attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 in New York.