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‘Everyone is dying’: Myanmar on the brink of decimation

anigbrowl 5y ago
One estimate provided by public health experts in Myanmar predicts that 50% of Myanmar’s 55 million people will be infected within three weeks by either the Alpha or Delta variant of Covid-19. One very reputable public health specialist expects that the population will be decimated by at least 10-15 million by the time Covid is done with Myanmar.
- sparrish 5y ago
  I guess decimation doesn't mean what it used to.
  - notjustanymike 5y ago
    I was thinking that too, but apparently in modern English it can mean "to reduce by a large amount". The 1/10th thing is a historical usage.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  I'm comparing countries in death/million inhabitants, and now the record is in Peru ~6,000 and a few countries have ~3,000 and then the count goes down fast. Go to https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?tab=table&zoomToSelection=true&time=2021-06-30..latest&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&hideControls=true&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... and sort by total death. 10 millions death in a country with a population of 55 millions is 180,000 death/million inhabitants. Perhaps I'm too optimistic, but 30x times the current country record is too much. I doubt that prediction is accurate.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    That and current fatality rate is pretty low. Even without medical treatment I can't see it topping 5% across the population.
- wyager 5y ago
  What do you have to be smoking to claim a 25% population-wide fatality rate from covid?
- sjansen 5y ago
  Tragic fact: Although in modern usage decimated means "eliminate a large number", historically it meant "eliminate 10%". So if the predicted loss of 20% to 30% of the populations is correct, Myanmar will be much worse than decimated. I can't wrap my head around the idea. I hope it's not true.
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    Historically, decimation was a punishment for Roman legions where every 10th solider was killed by his comrades in arms.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  This quote doesn't explicitly state that the 10-15 million will die from COVID but its certainly implied. That doesn't sound like it makes any sense at all though. 20% of the population? Why would Myanmar see 2-3x the global death toll on its own? I don't think there's any data to suggest a 20% death rate even with 0 medical treatment at all (and assuming 100% infection). Is this just someone getting trigger happy with an exponential model?
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    Untreated other medical issues due to health system overload? Maybe combined with civil unrest and partial societal collapse? That's about the only way the #s make sense and even than it's about an order of magnitude larger than seems plausible. It's really a number that needs explaining.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      Seems unlikely still. E.g. the american civil war cost 2% of the population. What prop dies if all medical facilities shut down entirely? Probably no more than 5%? 20% is just utterly enormous.
      - einarfd 5y ago
        20% is definitely a lot. But if you look at the estimates of the death rate in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge, they range from a bit over one million to almost three and a half in a population of roughly eight. So it does seem doable.
        gus_massa 5y ago
        According to Wikipedia they killed only(!!!!!!!) like 1.5 to 2 million people (around 25%). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Number_of_deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Number_of_deaths Also, Khmer Rouge had like 4 years to kill the people, and big waves of covid-19 last approximately one or two months. For example famine and unrelated illness that can't be treated because the hospitals are not working usually take more time to kill people.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Sounds like real humanitarian disaster, but how do they get a 50% case fatality rate in a country with an average age of 28. Doesn't sound very reputable to me..
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Sounds like real humanitarian disaster, but how do they get a 50% case fatality rate in a country with an average age of 28. That's probably not the assumption, they are probably counting indirect effects, such as those from: (1) Medical resource exhaustion impacting death rate from non-COVID direct causes, (2) Impact on necessary life-sustaining non-medical services from people being sick or dead (3) Increase in poverty-related mortality from lost work (due to laborer sickness, and due to service disruptions from other people being sick or dead). #2 and #3 are potentially particularly significant given that Myanmar has a large portion of the population that is already good insecure or otherwise marginal.
BrissyCoder 5y ago
> One very reputable public health specialist expects that the population will be decimated by at least 10-15 million by the time Covid is done with Myanmar. The population is only 54 million. How could Covid possibly kill 15 million there!?
- nend 5y ago
  I won't comment on how they came up with that number or how accurate it is, but Covid won't be the only killer. As one example, people who have heart attacks aren't going to get prompt care either with the medical system overworked and over capacity. That was one of the goals of the lockdowns in the US. Keep the healthcare system operational for all the other responsibilities it needs to fulfill on top of pandemic response.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    Even if we shut down all medical facilities, 20% of the population dying is outlandish. Myanmar's circumstances excluded.
    - lebuffon 5y ago
      20% might be high but in the absence of oxygen support most people over 65..70 will expire if they stay sick longer than a week with this damned virus. I don't know the how big the senior population of Myanmar is but 10% is not unreasonable.
      - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
        According to a 2020 report, [0] the hospitalisation rate for over-80s is around 20%. The hospitalisation rate for over-65s will be far lower. [0] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196573/covid-19-one-five-over-80s-need-hospitalisation/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196573/covid-19-one-five-ove...
  - nradov 5y ago
    In any given year very few people have heart attacks, or otherwise require advanced medical care to survive. So that would have only a miniscule impact on the overall death toll. Especially in a nation like Myanmar with a median age of only 29 years.
peteretep 5y ago
The situation there sounds dire, but this story is literally a set of WhatsApp messages turned into “news”. > One very reputable public health specialist expects that the population will be decimated by at least 10-15 million by the time Covid is done with Myanmar I really don’t think you can come up with a headline figure like that and then hand-wave away the actual source. My Bangkok dentist with an MPH from a good American university has been forwarding me Covid horror stories that are trivially debunked as fake news for the last 18 months — without names and verifiable quotes, the whole thing is worthless.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Given the recent military coup and the history there, naming sources could literally get them killed. The medical assessment may be off, but I'm inclined to trus tthe judgement of an IR expert with years experience of the country they study on the security situation.
  - peteretep 5y ago
    Sure, but the medical claim is clearly insane and also the headline
    - anigbrowl 5y ago
      I'm not so clear about that. It definitely seems panicky, but Burma/Myanmar has uniquely bad risk factors.
      - peteretep 5y ago
        > I'm not so clear about that Try your best to get a projected CFR of 25% using any metrics you can with a population that’s 70% under 40, even one with TB rates like Myanmar. Can’t be done.
lousken 5y ago
https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-health-travel-coronavirus-pandemic-myanmar-57a7d66ecec5cee2c72790e9dfbcb509 https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-health-travel-coronavir... higher quality source (though week old)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

One estimate provided by public health experts in Myanmar predicts that 50% of Myanmar’s 55 million people will be infected within three weeks by either the Alpha or Delta variant of Covid-19. One very reputable public health specialist expects that the population will be decimated by at least 10-15 million by the time Covid is done with Myanmar.

sparrish 5y ago
I guess decimation doesn't mean what it used to.
- notjustanymike 5y ago
  I was thinking that too, but apparently in modern English it can mean "to reduce by a large amount". The 1/10th thing is a historical usage.
gus_massa 5y ago
I'm comparing countries in death/million inhabitants, and now the record is in Peru ~6,000 and a few countries have ~3,000 and then the count goes down fast. Go to https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?tab=table&zoomToSelection=true&time=2021-06-30..latest&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&hideControls=true&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=true&Align+outbreaks=false https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor... and sort by total death. 10 millions death in a country with a population of 55 millions is 180,000 death/million inhabitants. Perhaps I'm too optimistic, but 30x times the current country record is too much. I doubt that prediction is accurate.
- giantg2 5y ago
  That and current fatality rate is pretty low. Even without medical treatment I can't see it topping 5% across the population.
wyager 5y ago
What do you have to be smoking to claim a 25% population-wide fatality rate from covid?
sjansen 5y ago
Tragic fact: Although in modern usage decimated means "eliminate a large number", historically it meant "eliminate 10%". So if the predicted loss of 20% to 30% of the populations is correct, Myanmar will be much worse than decimated. I can't wrap my head around the idea. I hope it's not true.
- alistairSH 5y ago
  Historically, decimation was a punishment for Roman legions where every 10th solider was killed by his comrades in arms.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
This quote doesn't explicitly state that the 10-15 million will die from COVID but its certainly implied. That doesn't sound like it makes any sense at all though. 20% of the population? Why would Myanmar see 2-3x the global death toll on its own? I don't think there's any data to suggest a 20% death rate even with 0 medical treatment at all (and assuming 100% infection). Is this just someone getting trigger happy with an exponential model?
- ineedasername 5y ago
  Untreated other medical issues due to health system overload? Maybe combined with civil unrest and partial societal collapse? That's about the only way the #s make sense and even than it's about an order of magnitude larger than seems plausible. It's really a number that needs explaining.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    Seems unlikely still. E.g. the american civil war cost 2% of the population. What prop dies if all medical facilities shut down entirely? Probably no more than 5%? 20% is just utterly enormous.
    - einarfd 5y ago
      20% is definitely a lot. But if you look at the estimates of the death rate in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge, they range from a bit over one million to almost three and a half in a population of roughly eight. So it does seem doable.
      - gus_massa 5y ago
        According to Wikipedia they killed only(!!!!!!!) like 1.5 to 2 million people (around 25%). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Number_of_deaths https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Number_of_deaths Also, Khmer Rouge had like 4 years to kill the people, and big waves of covid-19 last approximately one or two months. For example famine and unrelated illness that can't be treated because the hospitals are not working usually take more time to kill people.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
Sounds like real humanitarian disaster, but how do they get a 50% case fatality rate in a country with an average age of 28. Doesn't sound very reputable to me..
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Sounds like real humanitarian disaster, but how do they get a 50% case fatality rate in a country with an average age of 28. That's probably not the assumption, they are probably counting indirect effects, such as those from: (1) Medical resource exhaustion impacting death rate from non-COVID direct causes, (2) Impact on necessary life-sustaining non-medical services from people being sick or dead (3) Increase in poverty-related mortality from lost work (due to laborer sickness, and due to service disruptions from other people being sick or dead). #2 and #3 are potentially particularly significant given that Myanmar has a large portion of the population that is already good insecure or otherwise marginal.

BrissyCoder 5y ago

> One very reputable public health specialist expects that the population will be decimated by at least 10-15 million by the time Covid is done with Myanmar. The population is only 54 million. How could Covid possibly kill 15 million there!?

nend 5y ago
I won't comment on how they came up with that number or how accurate it is, but Covid won't be the only killer. As one example, people who have heart attacks aren't going to get prompt care either with the medical system overworked and over capacity. That was one of the goals of the lockdowns in the US. Keep the healthcare system operational for all the other responsibilities it needs to fulfill on top of pandemic response.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Even if we shut down all medical facilities, 20% of the population dying is outlandish. Myanmar's circumstances excluded.
  - lebuffon 5y ago
    20% might be high but in the absence of oxygen support most people over 65..70 will expire if they stay sick longer than a week with this damned virus. I don't know the how big the senior population of Myanmar is but 10% is not unreasonable.
    - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
      According to a 2020 report, [0] the hospitalisation rate for over-80s is around 20%. The hospitalisation rate for over-65s will be far lower. [0] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196573/covid-19-one-five-over-80s-need-hospitalisation/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/196573/covid-19-one-five-ove...
- nradov 5y ago
  In any given year very few people have heart attacks, or otherwise require advanced medical care to survive. So that would have only a miniscule impact on the overall death toll. Especially in a nation like Myanmar with a median age of only 29 years.

peteretep 5y ago

The situation there sounds dire, but this story is literally a set of WhatsApp messages turned into “news”. > One very reputable public health specialist expects that the population will be decimated by at least 10-15 million by the time Covid is done with Myanmar I really don’t think you can come up with a headline figure like that and then hand-wave away the actual source. My Bangkok dentist with an MPH from a good American university has been forwarding me Covid horror stories that are trivially debunked as fake news for the last 18 months — without names and verifiable quotes, the whole thing is worthless.

anigbrowl 5y ago
Given the recent military coup and the history there, naming sources could literally get them killed. The medical assessment may be off, but I'm inclined to trus tthe judgement of an IR expert with years experience of the country they study on the security situation.
- peteretep 5y ago
  Sure, but the medical claim is clearly insane and also the headline
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    I'm not so clear about that. It definitely seems panicky, but Burma/Myanmar has uniquely bad risk factors.
    - peteretep 5y ago
      > I'm not so clear about that Try your best to get a projected CFR of 25% using any metrics you can with a population that’s 70% under 40, even one with TB rates like Myanmar. Can’t be done.

lousken 5y ago

https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-health-travel-coronavirus-pandemic-myanmar-57a7d66ecec5cee2c72790e9dfbcb509 https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-health-travel-coronavir... higher quality source (though week old)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]