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Blog Newsletter Syndicate

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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Categories
Blog Newsletter Syndicate

Updated Pandemic Comparison

UPDATED 8/4/20: I thought I would re-write this as a syndicated newspaper column, so that’s what you see below, followed by the original blog post. – Daryl

Comparing Pandemics in a Cartoon

I’m an editorial cartoonist. Back in March I drew a cartoon infographic, comparing the size of major pandemics through recorded history. March seems like a long time ago. Lots of readers emailed me suggesting that I should update the cartoon to reflect the growing COVID-19 death count – so I did that.

I got angry mail, in response to the cartoon, from liberal readers who thought I was making the Trump administration’s arguments, minimizing the tiny COVID-19 monster as a “small” concern, like “the flu.” That wasn’t my intent. I was just interested in how the pandemics actually compared.

I’ve thought about drawing another cartoon comparing COVID19 with the most common causes of death in the world. The most recent stats I can find are from the World Health Organization in 2016 where COVID-19 would come in just behind malaria, suicide and HIV/AIDS, and would have double the death total of homicide and malnutrition – but it would still be a tiny speck compared to cardiovascular disease and cancer, so it isn’t easy to draw. Also, there are no easy, round, spikey monsters that represent suicide, malnutrition, homicide and heart disease.

Some readers thought I didn’t minimize COVID19 enough; they point out that a more important measurement is the percentage of the world’s population that died in each pandemic. The population of the world has grown exponentially in past centuries, making the Bubonic Plague tower over all the other pandemics with an estimated 200 million dead in a world that had close to 400 million in total population during the 1300’s.

Small Pox killed an estimated 56 million in the 1500’s, out of a total population estimated between 425 million and 550 million.

The Spanish Flu killed an estimated 40 to 50 million around 1918 and 1919 when the world population was between 1.8 and 2 billion.

The United Nations estimates the current world population 7.8 billion. If I adjusted the sizes of the spikey, round monsters in the cartoon to account for the estimated world population, the biggest pandemic monsters would be even bigger, and the smallest monsters would be even tinier specks. It would be impossible to draw that cartoon.

It is tough being a cartoonist in a pandemic.  – Daryl Cagle


Here’s the original blog post.

Back in March I drew a cartoon infographic, comparing the size of pandemics in history. March seems like a long time ago now, and some readers have emailed me suggesting that I should update the cartoon to reflect the most recent COVID-19 death count –so I did that. Here’s the updated cartoon.

I added a tiny 8/3/20 date under my signature, anticipating that as deaths skyrocket, I may be updating the cartoon a few more times with a growing COVID-19 monster. Since the cartoon can’t be reprinted until at least tomorrow, I added in the most recent daily rate and rounded off. I suppose I’ll release a new, updated version of the cartoon every month, as COVID-19 becomes more of a menace compared to his predecessors.

Here is the first version from March.

As the world continues to spin further into the pandemic apocalypse every month, I may make this into an animated gif to show the COVID-19 monster growing.

I got some angry mail in response to this cartoon, from liberal readers who thought I was making the Trump administration’s argument, minimizing COVID-19 as a “small” concern, like “the flu.” That wasn’t my intent. I’ve thought about drawing another cartoon comparing the most common causes of death in the world. The most recent stats I can find are from the World Health Organization in 2016 where COVID-19 would come in just behind malaria, suicide and HIV/AIDS, and would have double the death total of homicide and malnutrition –but it would still be a tiny speck compared to cardiovascular disease and cancer, so it isn’t easy to draw.

I’m still thinking about it.


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Categories
Blog Newsletter Syndicate

Pandemics Compared

My new coronavirus cartoon is something of an infographic, comparing the sizes of all of the world’s great pandemics. Each virus monster is sized to approximate the number of deaths in each pandemic.

I know this isn’t what editors want to see from editorial cartoons. Editors like funny jokes –but I love infographics. I drew a syndicated comic called TRUE! in the 1990’s, inspired by the cute infographics in USA Today.

(I kept flashing back to my Muppet days when I drew this, and kept wanting to put the ping-pong ball eyes on the tops of the “heads”.)

Lots of people ask me to post my roughs online. I hate doing that, but you want it, so I do it. Here’s the sketch.

I’m posting these first on Instagram (@daryl.cagle). I don’t have a lot of followers on Instagram. Come follow me and you’ll see some early, exclusive stuff, like my terrible, messy sketches! Here’s a detail …

The editor at the Albuquerque Journal and a professor at George Washington University spotted an error in my cartoon and I issued a correction. This is the original, incorrect cartoon is below, the corrected version is above. Can you spot the error and correction? (answer below).


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Don’t miss my other Coronavirus posts:
School and COVID-19
Broken Quarantine
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week through May 23rd, 2020
Hydroxychloroquine
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week through May 16th, 2020
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Pandemic through May 4th
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week through May 2nd, 2020
Best of the Grim Reaper, Part 1
Best of the Grim Reaper, Part 2
Dr Fauci PART 2
Dr Fauci PART 1
Trump and Disinfectant PART 2
Trump and Disinfectant PART 1
Most popular Cartoons of the Week through 4/26/20, (all coronavirus)
Forgotten Biden – Part 2
Forgotten Biden – Part 1
Most popular Cartoons of the Week through 4/18/20, (all coronavirus)
Blame China! Part Three
Blame China! Part Two

Blame China! Part One
Most popular Cartoons of the Week, through 4/11/20 (all coronavirus)
Planet COVID-19, Part 4

Planet COVID-19, Part 3
Planet COVID-19, Part 2
Planet COVID-19, Part 1
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week, 4/4/20 (all coronavirus)
Toilet Paper Part Two
Toilet Paper Part One
Trump and the Easter Bunny
The Most Popular Cartoons of the Week, 3/29/20 (all coronavirus)
Tsunami Coming
Pandemics Compared
See, Hear Speak No Virus
The Best Coronavirus Sports Cartoons
New Coronavirus Favorites
The Most Popular Coronavirus Cartoons (as of May 4th, 2020)
My Corona Virus Cartoons
Corona Virus Quarantine Blues in China


What I got wrong …

The error was that I left our a decimal point on Ebola – the deaths were 11.3K, not 113K – ten times less!

Some good news for a change.

 


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Categories
Blog

Chris Christie and “The Walking Dead”

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been eager to be the “take action guy” with Ebola. He sometimes gets the facts wrong, accusing a nurse of having ebola symptoms when she didn’t have ebola symptoms – and that’s great for me; as a cartoonist, I gotta love Chris Christie.

I get requests to show my rough pencil sketches – here’s the sketch for this one …

Christie600wideSketch

I draw these on tab sized paper, 11×17. I almost had Christie with multi-hand-motion-chip-eating-action, but that was too complicated. Simple is better.

It is rare that I draw governors; most readers don’t know the governors of other states, let along their own states. Christy stands above the other governors as a great character. Here he is bouncing back from this “bridge-gate” scandal.

The guy is fun.  Here’s Christie on running for president – I’d like to see him run.

For a while, Christie’s “Bridge-gate” traffic-jam scandal looked like it would sink Christie and I drew this umbrella cartoon.

I need to keep drawing this guy.

Categories
Cartoons

Chris Christie Ebola and the Walking Dead

155468 600 Chris Christie   Ebola and the Walking Dead cartoons

Categories
Cartoons

Ebola Not to Worry

155213 600 Ebola   Not to Worry cartoons

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Blog

ISIS, Ebola and the Media!

Here’s Isis/Isil/I.S./Islamic State, Ebola and the fickle media.

I like fickle media cartoons. It is fascinating how ebola has taken over cable news – to the exclusion of all else. That has to be frustrating to those media hog/hams over at Isis/Isil/I.S./Islamic State.

The fickle media serves me well.  Here is the media pushing Obama into war …

Here’s the school shooting in Connecticut back in 2012…

Here’s Obama, the media and the Secret Service prostitution scandal …

In the 2012 election, here’s the media focus moving from the Iowa Caucuses to the New Hampshire Primary …

Remember back in 2009, when the media was obsessed with the Obama girls getting a new puppy, when they should have been paying attention to Obama dumping money on his evil Wall Street buddies?

I love the media.

 

Categories
Cartoons

ISIS The Media and Ebola

154927 600 ISIS  The Media and Ebola cartoons