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COVID

COVID-19 and Fame

Author Stephen A. Berger, MD , 04-May-2020

Table of contents

Ask anybody on the planet, “What do Tom Hanks, Boris Johnson, and Prince Charles have in common?” and they will instantly shout – “Corona.”

Ask these same people, “Who were the three Prime Ministers that died of Coronavirus last month?” Few will respond, “Well…there was Nur Hassan Husein from Somalia, Mahmoud Jabril from Libya, and Joachim Yhombi-Opango from Congo – who died (respectively) in London, Cairo, and Paris.”

As of May 4, no fewer than eleven movie stars had contracted COVID-19, nine with fatal results. Other victims include retired Commanders of the Turkish and Polish Armies, a well-known rapper, and a mafia hitman. Almost half of the famous COVID-19 victims have been athletes, not surprisingly from countries that report unusually high infection rates (see list below).

History is largely written in the lives of famous disease victims. The “black death” of 1348 claimed only eleven well-known people, including the King of Spain, the Royal Consorts of England and France, four famous painters, and two Archbishops of Canterbury. In contrast, 62 famous people died during the “Spanish Influenza” pandemic, accounting for 39% of known causes of death in this population from 1918 to 1920!

COVID-19 in Athletes

width= – fatal
width=  – soccer
width= – American football
width= – basketball
width= – cricket

Argentina

Ezequiel Garay  width=

Brazil

 Jonathas de Jesus width=

Denmark

 Thomas Kahlenberg width=

 Peter Madsen width=

England

 Callum Hudson-Odoi width=

 Norman Hunter  width= width=

 John Rowlands  width= width=

France

 Eliaquim Mangala width=

 Arnold Sowinski  width= width=

Gambia

 Omar Colley width=

Germany

 Jannes Horn width=

 Timo Hubers width=

 Luca Kilian width=

 Fabian Nurnberger width=

 Stefan Thesker width=

Italy

 Zaccaria Cometti  width= width=

 Fabio Depaoli width=

 Innocezo Donina width= width=

 Alessandro Favelli width=

 Luciano Federici  width= width=

 Manolo Gabbiadini width=

 Antonino La Gumina width=

 Daniele Rugani width=

 King Udoh width=

Netherlands

 Henk Overgoor width= width=

Norway

 Morten Thorsby width=

Pakistan

 Zafar Sarfraz  width=  width=

Poland

 Bartosz Bereszynski width=

Serbia

 Dusan Vlahovic width=

Somalia

 Mohammed Farah width= width=

South Korea

 Hyun-jun Suk width=

Spain

 Baldiri Alavedra width= width=

 Mikel Arteta width=

 Goyo Benito width= width=

 Jose Luis Capon width= width=

 Jose Luis Gaya width=

 Benito Joanet width= width=

 Miguel Jones width= width=

Sweden

 Albin Ekdal width=

United States

 Tom Dempsey width= width=

 Rudy Gobert width=

 Orlando McDaniel width= width=

 Donoval Mitchell width=

 Christian Wood width=

Author
Stephen A. Berger, MD

Stephen A. Berger, M.D. is affiliated with the Tel Aviv Medical Center, where he has served as Director of both Geographic Medicine and Clinical Microbiology. He also holds an appointment as Emeritus Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Tel-Aviv School of Medicine. Dr. Berger co-founded GIDEON Informatics, developers of the GIDEON (Global Infectious Diseases and Epidemiology Online Network) web app, and the GIDEON series of ebooks.

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