How does coronavirus compare to other pandemics?

Globalisation has spread the disease faster

Question: How does coronavirus compare to other pandemics?
Position1 of 6›: COVID-19 is the worst pandemic in history
Argument: Globalisation has spread the disease faster

We are now more connected than ever, and this is reflected in the way that coronavirus has spread.

The argument

Our world now rest heavily on interconnectedness. People travel more than ever, and can do so more easily. Supply chains are global, rarely local. Even within most countries, traveling between cities is easier than ever. All of this wreaks havoc with the way pandemics start and can spread. For instance, the SARS pandemic in 2002-3 reached 32 countries, killing 813 people. As of the beginning of April, COVID-19 has reached 178 countries and killed at least 39,000 people. While, of course, this is not solely because of globalisation, it is clear that it assists its spread. Additionally, more people than ever now live in cities. While in 1960 only 34% of people were urbanised, 55% of the global population now live in cities. Diseases can spread much more easily in urban areas, so this facilitates pandemics. This is the cost of living in the age of hyper-connection. COVID-19 is an unprecedented pandemic because it is spreading on a larger scale - both geographically and in terms of the rate of infection - than anything in recent memory, or perhaps even historically.

Premises

[P1]The world is more interconnected than ever, with easier travel and global supply chains that help pandemics spread. [P2] Where SARS reached 32 countries, COVID-19 reached 178 and killed far more, and rising urbanisation (34% in 1960 to 55% now) lets disease spread more easily. [P3] COVID-19 is therefore spreading on a larger geographic scale and at a higher rate of infection than anything in recent memory. [C] Therefore, because globalisation has spread the disease faster, COVID-19 is the worst pandemic in history.

Counter-arguments

Critics argue that spreading faster is not the same as being the worst pandemic in history, and that on the measures that usually define 'worst' — total deaths and lethality — COVID-19 is far surpassed by others. The Black Death killed an estimated tens of millions and perhaps a third to half of Europe; the 1918 influenza killed on the order of 50 million; smallpox killed hundreds of millions over centuries; HIV/AIDS has killed tens of millions. The argument's own early figures — tens of thousands of deaths by April 2020 — were minuscule beside these, and even the eventual toll, while immense, did not approach the proportional mortality of the historic pandemics. They add that globalisation explains why COVID-19 spread quickly and reached almost every country, but reach and speed are different axes from severity. A disease that infects widely but kills a relatively small fraction of those infected is not thereby worse than one that killed a large share of the populations it struck. On this view faster spread supports 'unprecedented in reach,' not the far stronger claim that COVID-19 is the worst pandemic in history.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Critics note that reaching more countries measures geographic spread, not severity; by death toll and mortality rate the Black Death, 1918 influenza, smallpox and HIV/AIDS vastly exceed COVID-19. [Rejecting C] Faster, wider spread supports 'unprecedented in reach,' but 'worst pandemic in history' is judged on lethality and lives lost, on which historic pandemics far surpass COVID-19, so the conclusion does not follow.