The whole world is currently battling coronavirus. While the COVID-19 epidemic in China is slowly stabilizing, Europe and America are new places with massive cases of the disease. The fact is that a large number of people are infected worldwide, almost 200,000 cases. Also, almost 8,000 people have died from the infection in the past few months (at the time of writing).
Almost every minute we get updates and new information both locally and globally as well as the impression that the whole situation is quite panicky. Still, what we have to point out is that nearly 82,000 people have been cured so far, which is great news and encouraging to anyone who is currently experiencing symptoms or is already infected. However, while the whole situation and the panic that has arisen from the coronavirus pandemic seems very scary, we need to be rational and take note of some facts. COVID-19 is undoubtedly currently a major topic in all media, among medical professionals, politicians, literally everywhere. But is the new virus really the deadliest disease people have encountered in recent years? We will analyze this below. Well, let’s get started.
The main causes of death in the world
We know, the coronavirus seems to be the greatest disaster that has ever struck mankind. However, is this virus really that deadly? The answer is no. At least when comparing with the statistics of other very serious diseases. For example, the leading cause of death worldwide is cardiovascular disease (hypertension, heart attack, etc.). According to statistics globally, an incredible 17.8 million people died in 2017. Further, the list continues with cancer and 9.6 million deaths.
This was followed by respiratory diseases (coronavirus cause them, but not for a given period because it did not exist then) with 6.5 million deaths, AIDS with 942,000 casualties, malaria with 620,000 people dead, and seasonal influenza with between 290,000 and 650,000 who have passed away.
All these diseases can arise from different situations. For example, they can be inherited, but also the way of life greatly influences the occurrence of the listed causes of death. Some of the factors are high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, obesity and even air pollution.
What is particularly interesting are some other causes of mortality that aren’t diseases at all. For example, traffic accidents are highly placed on the death cause scale, with 1.24 million people dead in a given period. But even more interesting is the fact that in 2017, nearly 800,000 people committed suicide, and to this number can be added the killings of which there were approximately 464,000 in the world. So, the coronavirus isn’t really close to this data, which is really shocking. However, we don’t need to spread the infection or risk unnecessarily. It is important to follow all the preventive instructions of competent people and everything will be fine.
