I don't disagree with your end point but man are your statistics a mile off...
COVID is somewhere around 1 to 2% (you're off by a factor of 10). And a large part of that reason is treatment. Thus you can't really compare the black death from the medieval period to COVID now considering treatment has gotten better (thankfully, because the 14th-century plague would have between 80% and 100%(!!!) mortality rate depending on the strand).
Since the Bubonic Plague is still around, we can make estimations about how deadly it is given modern treatments, and it's at around 11%. Which, by the way, is lower than some modern outbreaks of coronavirus like MURS (we're fucking lucky that the virus that escaped quarantine is "only" 1-2%).
If you want a really scary fact about the black death, it's that we've already had outbreaks of drug resistant forms in Madagascar. If that were to become the next pandemic then I think we'd all be fucked. Luckily the plague is easier to quarantine than coronaviruses because plagues have a shorter incubation time (that might not be the right term) so people show symptoms earlier and thus are less likely to have asymptomatic periods where they're unknowingly spreading the disease.
The black death fatality rate of 50% was of the entire population, not the case fatality rate.
Though you have a good point about it being lucky about this virus only having a CFT of around 2%. The next pandemic could be a lot worse, especially if we start to get untreatable bacterial diseases with CFT of 20+%.
In the United States, as of the time of this posting, 564,000 people have died to COVID, and we've had 31,400,000 cases, which puts the case fatality rate at 1.8%.
Yes, case fatality rate is 1.8% but infection fatality rate is quite a bit below 0.5% (the exact number is unknown since no one in the US is doing random testing properly). Bubonic plague infection fatality rate was 50-70%, so over 100x larger.
I honestly think there is a case for removing this post as misinformation. At least adding a note or something. In general I'd expect the level of conversation to be higher on HN than this. 0.2% is a ridiculous and dangerously bad bit of misinformation that continues to be put out.
hnlmorg|4 years ago
COVID is somewhere around 1 to 2% (you're off by a factor of 10). And a large part of that reason is treatment. Thus you can't really compare the black death from the medieval period to COVID now considering treatment has gotten better (thankfully, because the 14th-century plague would have between 80% and 100%(!!!) mortality rate depending on the strand).
Since the Bubonic Plague is still around, we can make estimations about how deadly it is given modern treatments, and it's at around 11%. Which, by the way, is lower than some modern outbreaks of coronavirus like MURS (we're fucking lucky that the virus that escaped quarantine is "only" 1-2%).
If you want a really scary fact about the black death, it's that we've already had outbreaks of drug resistant forms in Madagascar. If that were to become the next pandemic then I think we'd all be fucked. Luckily the plague is easier to quarantine than coronaviruses because plagues have a shorter incubation time (that might not be the right term) so people show symptoms earlier and thus are less likely to have asymptomatic periods where they're unknowingly spreading the disease.
trashtester|4 years ago
Though you have a good point about it being lucky about this virus only having a CFT of around 2%. The next pandemic could be a lot worse, especially if we start to get untreatable bacterial diseases with CFT of 20+%.
nwallin|4 years ago
In the United States, as of the time of this posting, 564,000 people have died to COVID, and we've had 31,400,000 cases, which puts the case fatality rate at 1.8%.
exporectomy|4 years ago
_cs2017_|4 years ago
umanwizard|4 years ago
pif|4 years ago
Feelings is all that matters.
Make America Gawful Again, and all that.
unknown|4 years ago
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jaegerpicker|4 years ago
smitty1e|4 years ago
trashtester|4 years ago