Coronavirus would have killed 40 million if the world didn’t go on lockdown, say experts
03/27/2020 // Franz Walker // Views

The global coronavirus pandemic has claimed the lives of over 24,000 people as of Thursday, but that number could have been much, much worse. A new study points out that the outbreak could have caused 40 million deaths had it not been kept in check.

The study comes from Imperial College London where researchers estimated the potential scale of the coronavirus pandemic across the globe had measures not been put in place to stop its spread. The paper appeared in the 12the report of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modeling within the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics.

“Our findings suggest that all countries face a choice between intensive and costly measures to suppress transmission or risk health systems becoming rapidly overwhelmed,” said the study's co-author Dr. Patrick Walker, a member of the faculty of medicine at Imperial College London.

“However, our results highlight that rapid, decisive and collective action now will save millions of lives in the next year,” Walker added.

Currently, the latest estimates show that the coronavirus has infected over 531,000 people worldwide. However, according to the study, that number could have been as high as 7 billion people -- about 90 percent of the world's population -- had it remained unchecked.

Looking at multiple outbreak scenarios

The researchers looked at several possible scenarios for the pandemic, including:

Brighteon.TV

  • an unmitigated scenario, where no action was taken
  • a mitigated scenario that involved population-level social distancing, where a uniform reduction in interaction is implemented
  • a mitigated scenario that involved enhanced social distancing for older adults, in particular, those over 70 years
  • suppression, where wide-scale social distancing is implemented.

The researchers noted that an unmitigated scenario would result in over 40 million deaths and infect nine out of 10 people worldwide. In this model, the U.S. would have suffered over 2.18 million deaths and over 10 million hospitalizations. Currently, the U.S. has around 1,200 deaths, as of press time.

The researchers found that reducing the rate of social contacts through distancing -- together with reducing social contacts by 60 percent among the elderly -- can reduce this risk by half. However, this amount would still overwhelm health systems of countries all over the world.

Implementing measures early can have a dramatic impact

The rapid adoption of public health measures, such as testing and isolation of cases, combined with wider social distancing are critical in curbing the impact of the virus. The study suggests that if all countries adopt these measures early, deaths would be lowered to 0.2 per 100,000 per week. This means that 95 percent of the deaths could be averted, saving 38.7 million people. However, should the countries adopt them much later, the deaths go up to 1.6 per 100,000 per week, dropping the number of lives saved to 30.7 million.

“Rapid, decisive and collective action is required by all countries to limit the effect of this pandemic,” stated Professor Azra Ghani, chair in infections disease epidemiology at Imperial College London.

Slowing down the rate of infections is paramount as the outbreak threatens to overwhelm health systems all over the world. The modeling in the study revealed that, even if the rate of infection was reduced by half, the outbreak would still overwhelm health systems in all countries.

“Our research adds to the growing evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic poses a grave global public health threat,” warned senior author Dr. Neil Ferguson.

Sources include:

Imperial.ac.uk 1

Imperial.ac.uk 2

UKNews.Yahoo.com

DailyMail.co.uk



Take Action:
Support Natural News by linking to this article from your website.
Permalink to this article:
Copy
Embed article link:
Copy
Reprinting this article:
Non-commercial use is permitted with credit to NaturalNews.com (including a clickable link).
Please contact us for more information.
Free Email Alerts
Get independent news alerts on natural cures, food lab tests, cannabis medicine, science, robotics, drones, privacy and more.
App Store
Android App
eTrust Pro Certified

This site is part of the Natural News Network © 2022 All Rights Reserved. Privacy | Terms All content posted on this site is commentary or opinion and is protected under Free Speech. Truth Publishing International, LTD. is not responsible for content written by contributing authors. The information on this site is provided for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice of any kind. Truth Publishing assumes no responsibility for the use or misuse of this material. Your use of this website indicates your agreement to these terms and those published here. All trademarks, registered trademarks and servicemarks mentioned on this site are the property of their respective owners.

This site uses cookies
Natural News uses cookies to improve your experience on our site. By using this site, you agree to our privacy policy.
Learn More
Close
Get 100% real, uncensored news delivered straight to your inbox
You can unsubscribe at any time. Your email privacy is completely protected.