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Most Popular Wikipedia Articles of the Week (March 29 to April 4, 2020)

Prepared with commentary by Igordebraga and Rebestalic

Last week's report | Next week's report

This week yielded the normal 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic-related articles, but also featured some musicians who had been infected with its causative agent, the Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, as well as WWE event WrestleMania 36. Netflix shows up well here; articles related to the series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness took up the second, third and fourth spots.

(data provided by the provisory Top 1000)

Rank Article Class Views Image Notes/about
1 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic 5,593,988 I find it terrifying how something like the Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 can somehow damage the very biological functions of a person. Want it more terrifying? Okay, let's make it Terrifyingly Terrifying to a Terrifying Extent of Terrifyingly Terrific Proportions. To do that, make that same coronavirus damage the very biological functions of more than one million people, immobilise whole countries, send top-grade economies spinning, make two nurses in Italy commit suicide from stress, make people repeatedly clear whole shelves of supermarkets from panic buying, make the manufacturer of Corona beer lose 165 million US dollars, and kill the equivalent of all--that's all--the players in the entire NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, La Liga and Bundesliga...

...fifteen times.

2 Joe Exotic 4,076,724 [a]
'I am broke as shit, I have a judgement against me from some bitch down here in Florida, and this is all paid for by the Committee of Joe Exotic Speaks for America.'

Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotic, is a former zoo operator and criminal. Exotic, who refuses to wear a suit, was convicted on 19 criminal charges in 2019, split across things such as animal abuse and hiring to kill (specifically, Carole Baskin, owner of a big cat rescue facility and the above mentioned "bitch" who he was forced to pay $1 million in damages). Aside from abusing animals and hiring hitmen, events of the (self-claimed) best tiger breeder in the US include being raped at the age of five (okay, that's really sad regardless of criminal status), contending for the 2016 United States presidential election, trying out at the 2018 Oklahoma gubernatorial election and featuring in Netflix's documentary Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, which takes the third spot in this list.

3 Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness 2,460,831
4 Carole Baskin 2,341,891
5 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic by country and territory 2,306,585
Currently, India has a bit above 5,000 cases of COVID-19, the most affected state being Maharashtra, home of Mumbai (or, if you like, Bombay) among other cities. Meanwhile, the land of the Star-Spangled Banner has just passed a whopping four hundred thousand cases, with daily case increases consistently reaching above 20,000. New York is the hardest-hit state--and about that, see Andrew Cuomo (#11 on this list) for more details.
6 2020 coronavirus pandemic in India 2,149,064
7 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States 1,906,786
8 Spanish flu 1,890,887
Unfortunately, we don't know that much about the real stats of the Spanish Flu pandemic, as results were censored by a countries such as Germany, the UK (at the time including Ireland), France and the United States, who were in the war effort. What we do know, though, is that confirmed cases could have rocketed to half a billion, with anywhere from 17 to 50 million deaths. A note that some of the devastation of the Spanish Flu was due to sort-of-domino-effecting bacterial infection caused by things such as overcrowding and poor hygiene.
9 Coronavirus disease 2019 1,454,002
Okay, some clarification:

Coronavirus disease 2019 is the thing that's also called COVID-19. It's the illness that's taking world media by storm. The illness itself is caused by the immune system's response to the Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, also known as SARS-CoV2. The 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic is the ongoing outbreak of COVID-19 which is caused by SARS-CoV2. SARS-CoV2 is one of many viruses that fall under the Coronavirus category--a coronavirus is simply a virus that has little spikes called peplomers on it. There are many coronaviruses, not just a few.

10 Coronavirus 1,338,199
11 Andrew Cuomo 1,276,056
It's the man himself. Andrew Cuomo is the 56th and current Governor of New York. Alongside work in the promotion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--yes, that's Obamacare--and vertical tax equity, Cuomo can now be referred to as a great leader in the face of the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic. New York is the hardest-hit state in the US, and (I believe) it has more cases than Italy's ~140,000. And, as always when I talk about Andrew Cuomo, I'll end with this quote of his:

"You're not Superman, and you're not Superwoman [so you'd better be vigilant with your health]".
12 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Italy 1,274,296
Italy's COVID-19 outbreak has been one of the worst in the world, numbering almost 140,000 cases to date. An exceptionally high death rate as well, as Italy has quite an old population. However, the best is now coming for Italia--a quick inspection of Italy's daily increases at Johns Hopkins University's helpful coronavirus pandemic tracker immediately shows that Italy is nearing the end of the transmission curve. Congratulations, Italy, for your perseverance. You are braving a lockdown, civil unrest, nearly a hundred thousand active cases and nearly twenty thousand deaths. Keep going.
13 Joe Diffie 1,202,212 One more famous dead for COVID-19, this acclaimed country singer at the age of 61.
14 Deaths in 2020 1,176,713
...a lot of people die in the space of 365/366 whole days. The Worldometers population count tool shows that about every second, someone dies. Already, one third of the year in, we've lost 16 million people--ouch!
15 Ozark (TV series) 1,141,157
Netflix has released another season of the show about Jason Bateman as a financial advisor who just can't keep away from crime.
16 WrestleMania 36 1,087,735
All sports are in a standstill. And showing professional wrestling straddles the line about being a real sport, WWE didn't stop, and its Wrestlemania stravaganza was held behind close doors in the company's training facility on April 4 and 5.
17 Chris Cuomo 946,217
The brother of #11, a journalist who like many other TV personalities is working from home. Although in this case the quarantine is for real, given his COVID-19 test was positive.
18 Money Heist 939,624
Originally known as La Casa de Papel, the Spanish show about thieves had its fourth season released on Netflix. Can't comment on it yet, am still stuck in the first season.
19 Bill Withers 932,394 The singer-songwriter of classics such as " Ain't No Sunshine" finally withered at the age of 81.
20 Adam Schlesinger 794,313 The frontman of Fountains of Wayne - though his musical career was fairly prolific, including the still-beloved theme for That Thing You Do! - has passed away at just 52 from the disease that has taken over this report.
21 Anthony Fauci 692,298
"The nation's leading expert on infectious disease"-- The New York Times

Anthony Stephen Fauci is an immunologist from Brooklyn, New York City. He assumed the position of director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID; and the photo on the left is him with a NIAID badge, by the way) on November the second, 1984. Holy cheese. That means he's been in that position for thirty-six years. Must be a really smart guy. Fauci is also part of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, which was established on the 29th January this year.
22 John Prine 645,922 COVID-19 infected this acclaimed country-folk singer, who remained under intensive care.
23 2020 coronavirus pandemic in Spain 638,676
Spain's first cases were in the Canary Islands. Ever since, Spain's COVID-19 count has ballooned to a massive +140,000; in excess of even Italy. That places it in second place in the whole world in terms of total COVID-19 cases--not really a great honour to have.
24 Unorthodox (miniseries) 632,051
With people trapped at home, Netflix is more important than ever. And it's fairly global too, as shown by both a German-American (spoken in Yiddish!) miniseries about a Jewish woman running from her arranged marriage, and a Spanish movie about a futuristic prison.
25 The Platform (film) 608,148
  1. ^ combined page views total for "Joe Exotic" (2,739,317) and " Joseph Maldonado-Passage" (1,337,407), the latter of which is now a redirect due to a page move during the week (on March 29).