A common refrain heard online toward the end of the year was some variation of “okay, 2020 was bad, but it wasn’t the worst year ever, right?”
Many have pointed to historical years, like those during the First and Second World Wars or the American Civil War, as other recent examples of years with terrible outbreaks of disease (not to mention the deaths of soldiers fighting in wars).
Of course, there are also years in the middle ages when thousands died of illness due to the Black Plague, though many of these years weren’t also marked by raging warfare.
So, how bad was 2020, really? We all just got to stay home for a few months and watch online videos, right? Well, that’s one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is in pure terms of human impact.
The Pandemic
At the time of this writing, the coronavirus pandemic has sickened nearly 70 million people and killed one and a half million on a global scale. In the United States alone, fifteen and a half million people have fallen ill from the virus, while a staggering 290,000 people have died from it.
These numbers have been the target of misinformation campaigns throughout the year, with some claiming that the flu often kills more people in a given year than COVID-19 has. This is untrue: the flu, on average, kills between 12,000 and 61,000 people annually, a far cry from the toll seen by the coronavirus pandemic.
Each and every death from influenza is a tragedy, but the disease has been with humanity for decades. It’s also significantly less deadly and less infectious than COVID-19 has proven to be. The sheer human cost of the pandemic has been staggering, beyond just the people who have been sickened or killed by it.
Knock-on Effects
The massive human cost of the pandemic has ballooned out into other costs on the economies of the world. Lockdown efforts instituted to slow the virus, while good for public physical health, have taken a toll on the mental health of millions of people.
Planned vacations, weddings, and other events had to be canceled. For many, this year has felt like a long, slow car crash. Loved ones falling ill and dying, cities shut down to prevent further infection; it’s been a tough year for everyone.
How Bad Was it?
As for comparison, how bad was 2020, really? Bad. While the black plague killed over 25 million people over its several hundred years in Europe, more people than that have been sickened by the coronavirus this year alone.
The impact of this pandemic has been larger simply because the population of the planet is larger. Even in mathematical terms, the number of people suffering is higher.
So, don’t let anyone tell you any different: this year has been awful, and each and every death from COVID-19 has been a tragedy. Needless to say, everyone is now exasperated in their wait for a vaccine to hopefully put an end to this pandemic.
