Are you in the field of medicine as a doctor, nurse or researcher? I am seeking some clarification on the following.
At the time I wrote this, the https://covid19.who.int/ website showed that there were:
12,552,765 CONFIRMED cases
561,617 deaths
That's about 4.5% of all confirmed cases.
I know that we don't have all the facts on the actual number of cases, deaths, and recoveries because of the degree of diagnosis, testing, reporting, and many other factors. Also, the information we're presented with does not help us to understand the situation related to socio-economic factors, population, availability of testing, doctors, and labs, and other things that would give us a clear understanding of what's going on. Nor does it tell us how many people were asymptomatic and how many people have recovered, leaving that a big question mark. The number of people actually getting medical care is important to know because, while we are aware that the number of asymptomatics is up to 50%, knowing how many people are actually requiring serious care for CoViD-19 is very useful because it helps us to understand how much risk there is of suffering when combined with the number of asyms. Add to that the deaths and we get a much better picture of just how bad a virus this is.
Also, I find it a bit misleading that, instead of focusing on how many active cases there are, we continue to see the cumulative, which is not representative of the danger level of the viral disease, CoViD-19.
Other websites (I opened all of these websites at the same time as the WHO's) seem to have other sources or update more/less frequently as their numbers don't match the WHO's:
https://epidemic-stats.com/ has some very useful graphs.
13,028,182 CONFIRMED
571,080 4.4% deaths
7575523 58.1% recovered
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ seems to offer more useful info:
13,034,955 CONFIRMED
571,518 deaths
7,581,525 recovered
4,881,912 active cases
4,822,986 (99%) (mild cases)
58,926 (1%) (Serious or Critical)
https://virusncov.com/
13,032,918 CONFIRMED
571,356 deaths
7,373,667 (93%) recovere
5,087,895 active cases
5,028,969 (99%) (mild cases)
58,926 in severe condition
7,945,023 closed cases
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus doesn't seem to show numbers, but it has an interesting graph.
According to https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/, there are about 7.8 BILLION humans at this time. Ironically, despite the pandemic, there are still more deaths than births judging by the statistics displayed and their rate of change!
As a comparison point, since it's often used, the Spanish Flu H1N1 1918 infected about 33% of the world's population and killed 17-50 million (1.1%-3.3%). Taking into consideration the state of medicine at that time (very primitive compared to now), I'm sure the death rate would've been rather lower if that flu had happened now.
The SARS-CoV-2 fatality rate in confirmed cases is 4.5% (varies from country to country depending on healthcare and other factors), but when we look at the global population, the actual figures are 0.007% deaths and .17% infections, numbers that pale in comparison to H1N1 1918 (but the latter number, in particular, is likely much higher). In other words:
33% vs .17%=32.83%
1.1% vs .007%=1.003%
3.3% vs .007%=3.203%
I'm not sure how to calculate the degree of difference, but, gosh!
Please check my math! :)
So, my final question is this:
If my understanding of this is correct, we're doing this for a virus that is highly infectious but minimally fatal (in terms of percentages, not actual people, of course) when compared to major pandemics of the past. Why are we going to such great lengths? How different do you think it would've been if we'd just dealt with it like every other pandemic that we currently live with?