One estimate provided by public health experts in Myanmar predicts that 50% of Myanmar’s 55 million people will be infected within three weeks by either the Alpha or Delta variant of Covid-19.
One very reputable public health specialist expects that the population will be decimated by at least 10-15 million by the time Covid is done with Myanmar.
I'm comparing countries in death/million inhabitants, and now the record is in Peru ~6,000 and a few countries have ~3,000 and then the count goes down fast. Go to https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... and sort by total death.
10 millions death in a country with a population of 55 millions is 180,000 death/million inhabitants. Perhaps I'm too optimistic, but 30x times the current country record is too much. I doubt that prediction is accurate.
This quote doesn't explicitly state that the 10-15 million will die from COVID but its certainly implied. That doesn't sound like it makes any sense at all though. 20% of the population? Why would Myanmar see 2-3x the global death toll on its own? I don't think there's any data to suggest a 20% death rate even with 0 medical treatment at all (and assuming 100% infection).
Is this just someone getting trigger happy with an exponential model?
Untreated other medical issues due to health system overload? Maybe combined with civil unrest and partial societal collapse?
That's about the only way the #s make sense and even than it's about an order of magnitude larger than seems plausible. It's really a number that needs explaining.
Seems unlikely still. E.g. the american civil war cost 2% of the population. What prop dies if all medical facilities shut down entirely? Probably no more than 5%?
20% is definitely a lot. But if you look at the estimates of the death rate in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge, they range from a bit over one million to almost three and a half in a population of roughly eight. So it does seem doable.
Also, Khmer Rouge had like 4 years to kill the people, and big waves of covid-19 last approximately one or two months. For example famine and unrelated illness that can't be treated because the hospitals are not working usually take more time to kill people.
Although in modern usage decimated means "eliminate a large number", historically it meant "eliminate 10%". So if the predicted loss of 20% to 30% of the populations is correct, Myanmar will be much worse than decimated.
I can't wrap my head around the idea. I hope it's not true.
Sounds like real humanitarian disaster, but how do they get a 50% case fatality rate in a country with an average age of 28. Doesn't sound very reputable to me..
> Sounds like real humanitarian disaster, but how do they get a 50% case fatality rate in a country with an average age of 28.
That's probably not the assumption, they are probably counting indirect effects, such as those from:
(1) Medical resource exhaustion impacting death rate from non-COVID direct causes,
(2) Impact on necessary life-sustaining non-medical services from people being sick or dead
(3) Increase in poverty-related mortality from lost work (due to laborer sickness, and due to service disruptions from other people being sick or dead).
#2 and #3 are potentially particularly significant given that Myanmar has a large portion of the population that is already good insecure or otherwise marginal.
One very reputable public health specialist expects that the population will be decimated by at least 10-15 million by the time Covid is done with Myanmar.