[This is a supplementary article. For a greater understanding of context, please read "The Unjust Condemnation of the Great Barrington Declaration." click here]
Never before in the history of public health has such a low magnitude of mortality been used to justify measures with such devastating consequences. When this article was published, the Covid-19 pandemic had produced over 5.1 million deaths, worldwide [click here]. While every death is tragic, it is important to understand the metre of precedent based on other pandemics from the past. Additionally, the sheer number of deaths attributed to a pandemic can be so overwhelming that the context of population size is not fully appreciated.
The UN's pre-pandemic report [World Population Prospects 2019; click here] projected 59.23 million global deaths for the year 2020. In the projection for 2099, the same figure more than doubles to 121.70 million, as the global population increases by the billions. Most of this increase in mortality can be attributed to population growth. Is the projection for 2020 any less tragic than the projection for 2099?
Similarly, when this article was published, the total number of COVID-related deaths in the US was over 793,000 [click here]. A loss of life is always dreadful, and its significance should never be downplayed. Anyone who loses a loved one is going to be heartbroken over their loss. This is true whether SARS-CoV-2 is the cause of death or whether it's the H1N1 strain of influenza, the strain that caused the 1918 pandemic, an infection which remains endemic to this day. However, if Estonia had lost as many people to the Covid-19 pandemic as did the US, they would have lost more than half their population of 1.3 million people [click here].
The context of population size is paramount to comprehending the significance of a death toll, particularly in the case of a global event like a pandemic.
The H3N2 pandemic of 1968, "Hong Kong flu," was estimated to have killed between one and four million people worldwide [pg 19; click here] when the global population was just shy of 3,552 million (i.e., 3.552 billion; click here). At the time of this publication, the global population was over 7,898 million [.worldometers.info/world-population/]. Population adjusted, the death toll of the 1968 event would be comparable to a range of over 2.2 to 8.8 million deaths today.
(7898/3552 * 1 = 2.2235)
(7898/3552 * 4 = 8.8941)
The H2N2 pandemic of 1957, "Asian flu," was estimated to have killed between one and four million people worldwide [pg 19; click here] when the global population was just shy of 2,874 million [click here]. Population adjusted, the death toll of the 1957 event would be comparable to a range of over 2.7 to 10.9 million deaths today.
(7898/2874 * 1 = 2.7481)
(7898/2874 * 4 = 10.9923)
The H1N1 pandemic of 1918, "Spanish flu," was estimated to have killed between 25 and 100 million people worldwide [click here]. The CDC used to estimate 50-100 million deaths which were attributed to the pandemic but has since revised its estimate to "at least 50 million" [click here]. However, the 100 million figure is a distinct possibility [click here]. It is difficult to find a reliable figure for the global population in 1918. However, the population was 1,600 million in the year of 1900, and it was 2,000 million in 1927 [click here]. It's safe to say that the population in 1918 was less than 2,000 million, and this figure can be used for a conservative estimate. Population adjusted, the death toll of the H1N1 pandemic, in 1918, would be comparable to a range of over 98.7 to 394.9 million deaths today.
(7898/2000 * 25 = 98.7250)
(7898/2000 * 100 = 394.9000)
The mitigation strategies utilized in the 1957 and 1968 events did not have the same impact on society as the ones that were implemented in the wake of Covid-19. In fact, most of the people who were old enough to remember a significant event at the time (tweens, teens and older groups) do not have a substantial recollection of these events. Many people who remember where they were when JFK was assassinated (1963) do not remember the 1968 pandemic. The mitigation strategies which were utilized for the coronavirus pandemic will likely be ingrained into the memories of practically anyone who is alive five or six decades from now.
It would appear as if a threshold was significantly lowered here--the magnitude of mortality [per capita] that is required to justify such a radical approach to pandemic relief, namely lockdowns and vaccine mandates. Pandemic vaccine mandates are a new encroachment on personal liberty, an encroachment that was not imposed in 1957 when vaccines were available. According to Smithsonian Magazine, inoculating less than one-fifth of the population prevented 91% of would-be "Asian flu" deaths in the United States [click here]. Even if the figures from the 1957 and 1968 events are not adjusted to reflect population growth, the higher end of these estimates (4 million global deaths) are still on a par with Covid-19 estimates (currently 5.1 million global deaths).
(1.0 Ã · 1.1 = 90.9%)
Going by the more conservative global figures cited by Smithsonian Magazine ("the official journal published by the Smithsonian Institution" an "independent federal trust instrumentality, a unique public-private partnership"), the 1957 pandemic is estimated to have killed 1.1 million people worldwide. 116,000 of these deaths were US-Americans. According to Smithsonian, researchers estimate that an additional one million Americans would have died, were it not for the 40 million vaccines that were distributed to some 30 million individuals when the US had a population of 171.98 million [click here].
(30 Ã · 171 = 17.5%) & (17.5% is less than 20% or 1/5)
Excluding the 116,000 documented deaths in the US, the conservative figure of global "Asian flu" deaths would be reduced to roughly 1.0 million (1.1 million minus 0.1 million). Meanwhile, an additional one million deaths would have raised the US total to 1.1 million deaths (0.1 million plus 1.0 million). It seems highly unlikely that the US would have had more H2N2 deaths than the grand total for every other nation on earth, were it not for the clout and foresight of microbiologist Maurice Hilleman. The higher end of global "Asian flu" deaths was estimated at 4 million. Going by this figure (4 million global deaths), if an additional one million Americans had died because they were not vaccinated, the United States would have had roughly one-fifth of all pandemic-related deaths, worldwide. In 1957, the US made up less than one-sixteenth of the global population, which was 2,873 million at the time [click here].
(2873/172 = 16.7) & (1/16.7 is less than 1/16)
Some people have compared the Covid-19 death toll in the US to various wars throughout history. Aside from focusing on a single nation, a practice that elevates the lives of some over the lives of others, this is a false equivalence. A pandemic is not a war, and the underlying causes of these circumstances are starkly different from one another. War is not a naturally occurring event. There are no administrative mitigation strategies for war because war itself is a mitigation strategy imposed by legislators. The comparison of a pandemic death toll to that of war is new to Covid-19. The death tolls of the 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009 pandemics were not compared to wartime casualties. While public health messaging could have utilized the metaphor of a "war effort" to garner support for Covid-19 mitigation strategies, the history of war does not set a metre of precedent for the public health policies implemented in response to a pandemic.
When this article was published, a little more than a year and a half since the start of the pandemic, the total number of COVID-related deaths, worldwide, was 5,114,131 and counting [click here].
Hopefully, with a combination of natural immunity and artificial inoculation, we will achieve herd immunity some time in the not-so-distant future, and, hopefully, this figure will not double in the meantime. Hypothetically, though, if COVID-related deaths do end up totaling 10.3 million, worldwide, it would be within the range of population adjusted statistics from the 1957 H2N2 pandemic. And it would be between 9 and 38 times less deadly than the H1N1 pandemic of 1918, conservatively speaking.
Never before has such a low magnitude of mortality been used to rationalize such extreme mitigation strategies. A bar seems to have been lowered, significantly. The question is, why?
(Article changed on Nov 21, 2021 at 1:36 AM EST)
