Will coronavirus change the world?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Will coronavirus change the world?
Position‹2 of 3›: Coronavirus will cause irreparable harm
Argument‹4 of 4: Many people will die from coronavirus

As one country flattens its curve, another is approaching its peak. The total excess deaths caused by coronavirus are impossible to predict, and thus difficult to plan for. Lives will continue to be lost and by the end, no one will emerge untouched by this disease.

The argument

COVID-19 has potential to become one of the deadliest pandemic diseases in human history. The World Health Organization published the Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on February 28, 2020, estimating the death rates of COVID-19 based on 55,924 laboratory-confirmed cases in China. In the early stages of the outbreak in January 2020, the crude fatality rate was found to be over 17%, while this rate had reduced to 0.7% for cases identified in February thanks to improved standards of care. With new cases of COVID-19 emerging around the world by the end of February 2020, experts have predicted that ultimately 60-70% of the global population could be infected by the coronavirus. A 60% infection rate for 2020's global population of almost 8 billion would mean that, even if a relatively low fatality rate around 1% was maintained, tens of millions of people would eventually die from COVID-19. A death toll of that magnitude would make the coronavirus outbreak the deadliest pandemic in at least 100 years, since the Spanish flu infected 500 million people and killed 50-100 million between 1918 and 1920.

Premises

[P1]Experts predict that 60–70% of the global population could ultimately become infected with COVID-19. [P2] Even at a low fatality rate around 1%, infection on that scale would result in tens of millions of deaths. [C] Therefore, COVID-19 will kill enormous numbers of people, causing irreparable harm comparable to the deadliest pandemics in history.

Counter-arguments

Critics of this projection note that it extrapolated from February-2020 figures before vaccines, treatments and public-health measures existed. In the event, widespread vaccination, improved clinical care and non-pharmaceutical interventions kept the eventual death toll — while very large, on the order of millions — well below the tens of millions implied by an unmitigated 60–70% infection at 1% fatality. More fundamentally, mortality alone does not establish 'irreparable harm to the world': pandemics of comparable or greater relative severity, including the 1918 influenza, did not permanently alter the trajectory of global civilisation. A high death toll is a human catastrophe without necessarily meaning the world is irreparably changed.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The 60–70% infection projection assumed no vaccines, treatments or mitigation, all of which were developed and sharply reduced both infection and fatality rates. [Rejecting P2] Because those interventions lowered the fatality rate and slowed spread, the death toll, though large, fell well short of the tens of millions the premise's arithmetic implied. [Rejecting C] Even a very high death toll does not establish irreparable harm to the world, since earlier pandemics of similar relative severity did not permanently alter global civilisation.