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The known death toll in the United States from COVID-19 will exceed the death toll from the Spanish flu within a day or two, according to the side-by-side figures – although a direct comparison between the raw figures does not give the whole story, say medical experts and statisticians.
What is clear is that the numbers, given the modern tools that fight these diseases, are a heavy burden. According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the death toll in the United States linked to COVID on Sunday night stood at 673,763.
That’s just over 1,200 less than the death toll from the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed an estimated 675,000 in the United States. Before that, this influenza pandemic was the deadliest since the formation of the United States. With an average of 1,800 deaths per day, the number of people dying from COVID-19 could exceed the previous scourge by Monday.
There are differences between the two scenarios. In 1918, the American population barely exceeded 100 million, compared to 330 million today, as the Washington Post points out. That makes our death rate one in 500 Americans, down from one in 150 in 1918.
Globally, the death toll is 4.7 million so far, which is far lower than the 50 million deaths worldwide in 1918 and 1919 from the Spanish flu, as Fortune noted. But unlike the two-year period in which the Spanish flu ravaged the ranks of mankind, COVID-19 isn’t even going to quit.
“The fact that deaths increased at the end of 2020, nine months after the pandemic hit the United States, with the highest daily death toll at the start of January 2021, is perhaps the most comparison. disheartening with historical records, ”Virginia Tech historian E. Thomas Ewing told the Washington Post. “We ignored the lessons of 1918 and then ignored the warnings issued in the early months of this pandemic. We will never know how many lives could have been saved if we had taken this threat more seriously. “
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