Originally Posted by
NWplatinum
...{long snip}...Given this is the first time in history something of this magnitude has happened, desperate times call for desperate measures...{snip}...
You have to realize that the world (and the human race) existed long before you were born.
Without going back to the times of the Justinian Plague or the Black Death (combined, more than one hundred million deaths), just take a quick look at what kind of "significant" flu pandemics there were during the last 100 years:
* 1918-1920 Spanish flu: ~500 million cases, ~50 million deaths worldwide.
* 1957-1958 Asian flu: ~2 million deaths worldwide.
* 1968-1969 Hong Kong flu: ~ 1million deaths worldwide.
* 2008-2009 Swine flu: 150-500 thousand.
* 2019-2020 Covid-19: as of today 207,265 deaths.
Add to those cholera, typhus, tuberculosis, malaria and a few more, and you get the picture: In 2016 the global burden of all kinds of infections was 471,092.000 DALYs (Disease-Adjusted-Life-Years lost), a value that takes into consideration deaths, and both long-term and short-term incapacitation. This is 17.65% of the total DALYs lost to all causes, diseases, wars, crime, accidents, etc.!
The biggest difference from all previous pandemics is the speed of information transfer...