COVID-19 Pandemic in Comparison

I thought we could use a different thread than "Wuhan Virus: Is this the big one?" for talking about the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic compared to other pandemics or events.

To start with, here's an article from Bloomberg Opinion about The Once-in-a-Century Impact of Covid-19 Deaths: "The rise in mortality rates in the U.S. this year will likely be the worst since the 1918 influenza pandemic. In New York City, it may beat even that."

For continued reference, here's Our World in Data's Excess mortality from the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).

Excess mortality is a term used in epidemiology and public health that refers to the number of deaths above and beyond what we would have expected to see under ‘normal’ conditions. It is used to measure the mortality impact of a crisis when not all causes of death are known. We have previously written about excess mortality in the context of the death rates of young girls and in famines.

Here we are discussing it in the context of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19).

What are you talking about. It's totally under control. There's just one person coming in from China.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/22/trump-on-coronavirus-from-china-we-have-it-total...

>3 Rood: (ouch!) Unfortunately, that is an important note about the official United States response. Thank you.

This thread is for more than what's happened in one or two countries, but as I was thinking about it, I've grabbed a link to a page putting some of the viral spread and governmental responses in perspective.

"Five months in: A timeline of how COVID-19 has unfolded in the US" (USA Today in April)