From the Telegraph:
For numbers that are both frightening and (oddly) calming, by far the best document to turn to today is a study published on Thursday by a collaboration of experts from the World Health Organization and various divisions of Imperial College London.
On the sobering side, it reveals the Covid-19 pandemic to be on a par with the 1918 Spanish flu in terms of both its lethality and scale. “We estimate that in the absence of interventions, Covid-19 would have resulted in 7 billion infections [almost everyone on earth] and 40 million deaths globally this year,” it states.
The study, which is based on data from China as well as high-income countries, calculates that mitigation strategies which fall short of a complete lockdown would save 20 million lives but would not prevent health systems becoming overwhelmed. In low income countries demand on critical care beds would outstrip supply by a factor of 25. In a typical high-income country demand outstrips ventilators by a factor of seven. In the UK it’s eight.
On the brighter side, the analysis finds that “if a suppression strategy is implemented early and sustained” then the vast majority of those 40 million lives, an estimated 38.7 million people, would be saved. It’s a suppression or “lockdown” strategy that the UK pivoted to after brief hesitancy five days ago and which much of the rest of the world is following.
www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/confirmed-case-numbers-important-perhaps-not-reason-think/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr