Mar 16, 2020
Adopted from the lecture by professor Alexander Chuchalin, MD, Director of the Pulmonary Research Institute (Moscow)
Our, or more significantly our “thought leaders”, collective short term memory is bad. While they sound like apocalypsis is coming, we had a number of epidemics in the first 20 years of 21st century, many of which dwarf COVID-19.
2002 - SARS Atypical Pneumonia caused by a novel, at the time coronavirus
Diagnosed: 8,096
Died: 774
Mortality: 9.6%
Countries affected: 29
2003 - H5N1 Avian Flu
Diagnosed: 861
Died: 455
Mortality: 52.8%
Countries affected: 18
2009 - H1N1 Swine Flu
Diagnosed: 1,632,258
Died: 284,500
Mortality: 17.4%
Countries affected: 214
2012 - MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) caused by yet other coronavirus
Diagnosed: 2,519
Died: 866
Mortality: 34.4%
Countries affected: 27
2013 - H7N9 (new Avian Flu)
Diagnosed: 1,568
Died: 616
Mortality: 39.3%
Countries affected: 3
2019 - COVID-19
Diagnosed: 98,113
Died: 33,386
Mortality: 3.5%
Countries affected: 27