One very reputable public health specialist expects that the population will be decimated by at least 10-15 million by the time Covid is done with Myanmar.
10 millions death in a country with a population of 55 millions is 180,000 death/million inhabitants. Perhaps I'm too optimistic, but 30x times the current country record is too much. I doubt that prediction is accurate.
Is this just someone getting trigger happy with an exponential model?
That's about the only way the #s make sense and even than it's about an order of magnitude larger than seems plausible. It's really a number that needs explaining.
20% is just utterly enormous.
Also, Khmer Rouge had like 4 years to kill the people, and big waves of covid-19 last approximately one or two months. For example famine and unrelated illness that can't be treated because the hospitals are not working usually take more time to kill people.
Although in modern usage decimated means "eliminate a large number", historically it meant "eliminate 10%". So if the predicted loss of 20% to 30% of the populations is correct, Myanmar will be much worse than decimated.
I can't wrap my head around the idea. I hope it's not true.
That's probably not the assumption, they are probably counting indirect effects, such as those from:
(1) Medical resource exhaustion impacting death rate from non-COVID direct causes,
(2) Impact on necessary life-sustaining non-medical services from people being sick or dead
(3) Increase in poverty-related mortality from lost work (due to laborer sickness, and due to service disruptions from other people being sick or dead).
#2 and #3 are potentially particularly significant given that Myanmar has a large portion of the population that is already good insecure or otherwise marginal.