PLEASE NOTE: I wrote this post March 29, 2020. I did not post it until the date shown above, because i wanted to have several posts ready before going live and, well, i am just getting started with this blog and work, family and other things got in the way. But, please be kind–this was not written with the perspective that we have now, two months further in.

The COVID-19 pandemic is happening as I write. It has been happening for some months now.

I see social media posts ranging from railing against people who dare to leave their homes–one FB friend offering to drive around shooting those who leave their homes–to advising folks that this is just a hoax–by the Dems, the Russians, the Chinese, take your pick. News coverage tends to be breathless and designed to scare people.

So, let’s start out with some simple reality checks:

• COVID-19, the novel corona virus, is real. Not a hoax.
• People are getting sick all over the world, some very sick, and some are dying
• The numbers are large in some areas
• Hospitals are not equipped to deal with such an influx of patients in severe respiratory distress. They do not have enough ventilators, for one thing. Without ventilators, they cannot keep the sickest patients alive long enough for the patients to recover.
• It is critical that we slow the spread of the virus by social distancing, hand washing, and staying in place. This does two related things: it spreads the new cases over a longer period of time (see discussion below), and because there are fewer new cases than there would be if we had done nothing, it gives hospitals a chance to catch up by buying more ventilators, masks, gloves and other necessities.
• However, because of these efforts, and because the virus started in one place and needed time to spread to other places, the number of people who have died from COVID-19 is insignificant SO FAR when compared to the total number of worldwide deaths. In 2017, the last year with readily available figures, 56 million people died. Assuming similar figures for 2020, while the current COVID-19 death toll of 33,908 was occurring, 14,000,000 people died of other things. Math says COVID-19 deaths were 0.2 per cent of total worldwide deaths in the first three months of 2020.
• Does that mean COVID-19 is itself insignificant? That the worry is just a result of media hype? No. Absolutely not. Deaths are indeed increasing every day, due mostly to geographic spread and local transmission. On March 28, 2020, the worldwide deaths were 3,508. On average, 153,424 people die worldwide every day, so the COVID-19 percentage of that total has already increased to 2.3 percent on the worst individual day so far, ten times the overall share during these past three months.
• In sum, COVID-19 is NOT at this time the apocalypse nor a horror story. It is, so far, a tiny sliver of worldwide deaths. It IS, however, a new, widespread infectious disease that carries building and increasing danger.

Next: putting COVID-19 risks, deaths, and economic impacts into perspective

Then: what happens longer term?