Staying Up With The Times

Just a quick note to say that it looks like tomorrow’s COVID-19 reporting will be saying that the global total for coronavirus cases has for the first time a seven digit number beginning with a ‘2’.  It is less than 2 weeks since that total even got a seventh digit.  I have little doubt that in less than a further 2 weeks from now, that total will begin with a ‘3’.  It is the way things are at the moment.  This thing is not going away any time soon – and it shows no sign of diminishing.

Oh, some folks are saying there are less new cases in the last few days. I grant that, but don’t they realise there has been a general public holiday period in that time in many countries, meaning the testing system was largely on holiday too – and it is largely the testing regime that finds new cases.  Very few nations actually reported COVID-19 figures – at least at the time I checked.  So, it is best to ignore the last few days in determining anything regarding how The Virus is progressing.  Tomorrow will be different, and I will be watching.

In any case, nothing has changed in the important metrics of the pandemic.

Something else happens tomorrow morning Australia time (from my rough calculation).  At some point, in I think about 12 hours time from writing this, the global population clock (on https://www.worldometers.info) will tick over a count made up of ten 7’s or 7,777,777,777.   That is ~7.78 billion folks breathing Earth’s ground-level atmosphere. I hope to get a snapshot of the clock as it does that but I may still be in the land of nod. 

When this event occurs it will leave just another 220 million more net additions to reach a global population of 8 billion.  220 million is a good bit less than 3 years population growth.  That 8 billion figure will happen in mid December 2022.  Perhaps I shouldn’t be so precise.  Let’s just say sometime in December 2022.

That will remain true unless COVID-19 takes a dramatic turn for the worse.  Worse for us that is, or some other dramatic(or should I say ‘drastic’? – either/or I think) event produces a similar negative effect.  As things stand, the disease will not be even a blip on our population growth.  The current virus total of around 119,000 deaths is next to nothing really, in those terms.  That figure represents a little over 12 hours net new births.  Even a million deaths would be recovered in a little over 4 days.

The human tendency to overestimate our own or anyone else’s personal value to the world is drawn into stark relief in the light of that factual reality.