‘God preserve us all’: Samuel Pepys and the Great Plague (2015)

Dunno if this is known outside the UK

Syria gained no growth. Places that got destabilized by war and became great playground for local warlords got no growth.

Wars are pretty much catastrophy for most involved.

The >1% numbers are all CFRs, calculated from diagnosed cases. They don't account for people with no symptoms, or those who aren't tested.

It's very hard to estimate unmodified population mortality, because the real numbers are lowered by quarantine measures and health care.

But real population mortality seems set to be well under 1%, with the bulk of deaths among the over the 60s, heavily skewed to the over 80s.

That's hardly trivial, but it's a long way off the 240 million who would die if the population mortality really were around 3%.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_ag... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OECD_countries_by_hosp...

In reality, you have China. They are nowhere near these numbers. In Germany trade show get cancelled, events get cancelled, soccer games take place without spectators, schools close. Quarantine measures will certainly be put in place as well when needed. All this helps to keep infections down and slow the spreading. It worked in China after all.

I am no expert on diseaes, but I did my fair amount of number crunching. And that tell me that just taking the current average of deaths and infections, currently somewhere around 3.4%, extrapolate the number of infections worldwide and multiply the two doesn't fly. At the very least you have to brake down the world population by age groups based on the same groups we have specific mortality rates for. doing so already gives you a better picture and a more realistic number. Nobody who comes up with expected fatalities seems to bother to do so.

Obviously, that leaves the whole impact of counter-measures out of the equation. it doesn't account for time nor for any regionl clusters of people. Neither does it account for any local shortages due to an overwhelmed medical system for certain periods in certain regions. Or for any steps taken to counter these effects. To properly do so requires a full scale modelling of this thing. unfortunately the numbers are changing quite fast, so building these models is quite ifficult i suspect.

You would also have to account for margins of error and the fact that testing is a major influence in any parameter of this model. And testing varies highly between countries.

TLDR: The numbers a re a mess, calculation and modelling is difficult and everything is changing daily. Good luck with coming up with any reliable predictions.

I would love to see numbers for testing so. Especially how many tests have been conducted by region, how many where positive and how many negative. Ideally over time.

My current theory is that people are just scared. The numbers seem scary (no baseline as things like the flu are not nearly as thoroughly reported by the press) and every new infection and fatality is extensovely covered, whle the bigger picture isn't. Then this whole thing is just one big unknown, and humans are programmed to fear the unknown. Then you have confirmation bias, people tend to seek information confirming their opinions. Social media is designed to reinforce this bias, media is ware of that an needs clicks.This further reinforces this effect.

Also people want confirmation, so they actally seek out these filter bubbles. Humans in general also tend to be bad at risk management and evaluation. So, psychlogically I suspect it is just fear, combined with a desire for confirmation. Because, as crazy it is in my eyes, sharing your fears makes it easier for you to bear. Others not being affraid and giving you pushback on that is the last thing these people want or need.

I have still no idea how tackle that, spreading fear is still just plain wrong. Pushback and facts don't seem to work, so no idea what would.