Your Visual Reminder That Covid Is More Than the Flu
Sometimes people die from the flu. Sometimes people die from COVID-19. People die from suicide, drug overdoses, heart disease, and more. So, if your community hasn’t had many COVID-19 deaths yet, you may have convinced yourself that the coronavirus is just as deadly as other things you don’t worry about, like the flu.
But as this diagram shows, this is not the case. Play the animation and you will see several familiar causes of death ranked. These are not the main causes of death in the world; cardiovascular disease and cancer cause far more deaths than the causes listed here. But the causes of death in this chart are those that COVID-19 will skip towards the end of the animation.
The schedule starts in early 2020, and by February 8, COVID is at the bottom, with more deaths from natural disasters. It remains in this ranking until March 16, when it starts to take off. By March 30, COVID is overtaking diarrheal disease and war. On April 11, the murder overtook. By the end of April, the coronavirus has overtaken malaria, and on May 15, more COVID will die from COVID than from suicide.
As the creator of the chart notes , these causes together still account for only 7% of global deaths. But the animation shows how quickly the coronavirus overtook other causes. Cases of the virus are still on the rise worldwide. The full 60% of reported cases occurred in the last month if you thought cases might be slowing down. Unfortunately, we are still far from the end. It will only get worse .