COVID Keeps Growing

Here’s my cartoon comparing the sizes of the worst pandemics in history.

The cartoon may look familiar; I’ve been updating it as deaths from COVID-19 have been growing through the year, with deaths now rounded off at 300,000 in the USA and 1,600,000 worldwide. That’s our coronavirus in the lower right corner – here’s what he looked like a couple of months ago on September 20th when there were “only” 950,000 worldwide deaths and he didn’t even merit legs.

Moving back to August 3rd, COVID-19 was looking pretty tiny at only 690,000 worldwide deaths.

Our coronavirus was little more than a speck back on March 30th when the worldwide death estimate was only “thousands.”
COVID deaths are skyrocketing now and I’ll keep updating the cartoon every month or two. It is likely that our COVID-19 character will grow larger than the combined 17th Century Great Plagues (bottom row left) that were resurgences of the Bubonic Plague in Europe.  Later this Spring, COVID-19 may stand taller than the Antonin Plague (top row right) that killed as much as one third of the population of the Roman Empire in 165 to 180 AD and was suspected to be either smallpox or measles.

With so many people who won’t have access to a vaccine, or who reject taking a vaccine, there’s no telling how long I’ll keep updating this cartoon, and how big COVID will grow.

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