The first documented case of COVID-19 is thought to have appeared onDecember 1 2019 in Wuhan, China.
Yet this is not the first pandemic to occur in recent years.
It rapidly spread throughout Mexico and the US and was declared a fullpandemic by the WHOon June 11 2009.
The comparison highlights four important differences.
This contrasts with the COVID-19 pandemic with the highest number of cases reflecting the viruss origins in China.
2009 H1N1 data as of July 6 2009 was obtained from: https://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_07_06/en/.
Jeremy Rossman
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For the2009 H1N1 virus it was estimated to be 1.5, whereas COVID-19 is estimated to be between2.38and3.28.
Third, the number of fatalities for COVID-19 is far greater than that seen with the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
With an estimated case fatality rate of 2.3%, that would give 548,839 fatalities worldwide.
With both pandemics, there are many mild cases that often go undetected and unconfirmed.
For COVID-19, recent reports from China suggest confirmed cases representonly 14%of the total number of cases.
Even using that lower rate, there could be still 133,630 fatalities resulting from COVID-19.
SEIR model was created at http://gabgoh.github.io/COVID/index.html.
R0, incubation and infectious period were based on: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/science.abb3221.long.
CFR was based on: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/13/science.abb3221.long.
All other values were as recently described: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56.
In China, the initial containment effort was estimated to reduce theR0 of 2.38 to a Rt of 1.36.
Thanks to tighter travel and movement restrictions, it later fell to 0.98.
These numbers include both confirmed cases and the estimated unconfirmed mild and asymptomatic cases.
If examining only the impact on the most severe and confirmed cases, the later interventions decreasedRt to 0.36.
Thats nearly a million fatalities in the US and over 178,000 fatalities in the UK.
Created using the SEIR model at: http://gabgoh.github.io/COVID/index.html with intervention at day 63 reducing Rt to 0.98.
But this dramatic reduction may not be possible when factoring in the number of asymptomatic cases seen in China.
Also, steadily increasing intervention strength will have a larger impact than is reported by this single-step model.
US President Trump and others have said we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.
