What, me worry?
Yes, I do worry. The pandemic seems out of control, with accelerating number of infected. Of course, much of it is due to increased testing, but not all of it. Increasing number of hospitalisations and deaths indicates that there is a significant real increase in infections. Also remember that number of deaths is 2-3 weeks behind, those that die today, most of them got infected 2-3 weeks ago.
Regarding how deadly the virus is: At the moment it's difficult to get reliable data, fatality rate estimates range from 0.3% to 3%. Doesn't seem to be much compared to other viruses like Ebola and Rabies. But lets' look at the yearly number of deaths caused by infections. The infections taking most lives are lower respiratory infections, taking more than 3 million lives each year. Now, these infections are caused my many different germs. If we look at infections caused by a single agent, number 1 is (according to several sites) tuberculosis, closely followed by HIV. Tuberculosis (tenth most important cause of death overall) kills around 1.5 million people per year globally (numbers vary a bit, but on the average 1.5 million seems like a reasonable number). Other major infections like seasonal influenza and malaria are far behind.
We've had significant number of deaths from Coivid-19 since March, 1.2 million deaths in 8 months. For a whole year that would be 1.8 million. This suggests that currently the new corona virus is the single germ taking most lives globally. This is of course a result of the number of people being infected.
Admittedly, most of the deaths happen in the elderly, and those with chronic diseases. No doubt, some of those would have died this year anyway. But that has to be the minority. You can live for years with diabetes II, hypertension and cardiopulmonary diseases.
We will probably get a vaccine. But how good it will be remains to be seen. And as JDR mentioned, it may very well take more than a year before we have enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone that needs to be vaccinated.
a pibbur who is indeed worried. Well, as you probably know, it's quite normal for him to be worried (which in itself is a bit abnormal), but now he's more worried than usual.
PS. More on the number of deaths. It's a bit like deciding what is the most dangerous snake. When it comes to the potency of the venom, most agree that the culprit is the Australian (of course) inland taipan. But that one lives in areas far away from people, and it hasn't caused human deaths for years. The snake taking most lives is the saw scaled viper. Its venom is only 10% as lethal as that of said inland snake, but it causes more deaths than every other snake combined. Unfortunately it lives in high-population areas like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka and therefore human-snake interactions are much more common. DS.