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The Corona Crucible – Wednesday 1st April

World  850K+
USA 180K+
World fatalities 40,000+                       

It’s April Fools’ Day, but this is no joke. It’s been just three weeks since the World Health Organisation declared a global pandemic. It’s expected that the virus will continue to spread exponentially. Experts keep talking about bringing the curve down, limiting the spread of infection.

Consider that in just one week, cases worldwide have more than doubled, jumping from 300,000 to 700,000. Based on a doubling of cases each week, in four weeks from now, the end of April, we can expect around 10 million people to be infected. Based on a death rate of around four percent, this virus will have killed around 400,000 people by then.

By the end of May, double these figures again. This does not take into account the spread of Coronavirus in the USA, which is currently increasing at more than twice that speed, doubling every three days. If the rate of infection continues at the current rate in the US, then by the end of April over two million Americans will be infected.

None of this takes into account the capacity of health systems that in some countries are already struggling to manage the number of people presenting at hospitals and requiring intensive care. In Italy, the mortality rate is over ten percent. In Spain, it’s almost as bad. In some regions of the world, like Indonesia, they don’t have the means to test, or treat those infected, let alone keep accurate records.