San Diego City Councilmember Jennifer Campbell is expressing her frustration with local residents’ resistance to outdoor mask-wearing and social distancing, even saying that the county sheriff should be arresting them.
“This is the worst virus in the history of medicine,” Campbell, a physician, exclaimed in a Tuesday press conference on Ocean Beach, California.
But that claim isn’t even close to being true, no matter how you slice it.
COVID-19 has been deadly. Estimates put worldwide deaths at nearly 745,000 and U.S. deaths at about 165,000 — numbers that will surely rise. The virus is very infectious, and it continues to spread in various places despite a patchwork of mask orders, social distancing rules, and business capacity restrictions. Even places such as New Zealand, where the government imposed severe lockdowns and initially saw transmission slow close to nil, are seeing modest rises.
Still, most people who get sick from the virus do not die, and many people who contract the virus do not even get sick. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in July that 40% of positive cases are asymptomatic. An antibody analysis commissioned by the CDC suggests that there are reasons to believe that number could be even higher.
The study found that based on the presence of antibodies in 10 localities, “it is likely that greater than 10 times more SARS-CoV-2 infections occurred than the number of reported COVID-19 cases.” The study suggests that those infections went untested because the people infected never felt sick or only had mild symptoms.
On mortality, data clearly show that relative to the outbreak’s first two months, the rate at which people are dying has fallen significantly in countries around the world, including the United States. Doctors have discussed how treatments have reduced the average length of hospital stays and given those who are hospitalized a much better chance of surviving. As the development of treatments continues, we can only expect that metric to improve.
As for children, the risk of illness and death is very low, which has driven CDC Director Robert Redfield’s candor about the importance of reopening schools.
In stark contrast, the Spanish Flu of 1918 proved much more vicious and indiscriminate. A CDC estimate puts worldwide infections at 500 million, with total worldwide deaths at 50 million and U.S. deaths at some 675,000. Seniors were particularly vulnerable, as they are to COVID-19.
Unlike the COVID-19 pandemic, mortality was also high among young children. That flu also killed many healthy people aged 20 to 40, a group that has not suffered large numbers of COVID-19 deaths.
These are characteristics of the worst virus in the history of medicine. Granted, the COVID-19 pandemic is not over, and may Heaven forbid a reversal of course. Things could theoretically get worse, but it’s nearly impossible to imagine worldwide deaths ballooning from 745,000 to anything close to 50 million, especially considering improvements in treatment and a pending vaccine.
As for comparisons to other viruses, coronavirus deaths just surpassed 2019’s HIV deaths, which the World Health Organization estimates were 690,000 worldwide. Remember that the HIV outbreak dates back to 1981, and despite significant advancements in treatment, it still killed more than half a million people last year. The coronavirus has been around for less than a year and has just recently surpassed that number. In the long term, it is not worse than HIV.
Based on the mortality metric, it’s not even accurate to say yet that the coronavirus is worse than the flus of 1957 and 1968. Estimates suggest each killed some 1 million people worldwide. COVID-19 deaths could certainly surpass that number, but they haven’t at this point.
Campbell’s claim that COVID-19 is “is the worst virus in the history of medicine” was reckless and untrue. It is imperative that as the country debates policies for school and other reopenings, people have a proper understanding of the virus’s lethality. If people are misled to believe that contracting the virus means certain death, the much-needed economic reopening will be unjustifiably stalled.
