Data provided by The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

The known death toll from COVID-19 in the United States surpassed the number of dead from the Spanish Flu yesterday  according to the most recent data – although a direct comparison between the raw numbers doesn’t give the whole story.

What is clear is that the sheer numbers are a heavy burden.  COVID-related U.S. deaths as of yesterday were over 676,000 according to New York Times data (see chart above) .  California, Texas, Florida, New York a and Illinois are the states with the most deaths.

The 1918 Spanish Flu took an estimated 675,000 lives in the U.S.  Before COVID, the Spanish Flu pandemic was the most lethal since the United States was formed.  

There are differences between the two scenarios. In 1918, the U.S. population was just over 100 million, whereas it’s 330 million today, as The Washington Post points out. That makes the death rate 1 in 500 Americans as opposed to the 1918 toll of 1 in 150.

Globally, the number is 4.7 million dead so far, which is much lower than the worldwide 50 million who died in 1918 and 1919 from the Spanish flu, as Fortune noted. But unlike the two-year period that the Spanish flu ravaged humanity’s ranks, COVID is not even close to quitting.

“The fact that deaths surged at the end of 2020, nine months after the pandemic reached the United States, with the highest daily death tolls in early January 2021, is perhaps the most discouraging comparison to the historical record,” Virginia Tech historian E. Thomas Ewing told The Washington Post.  “We ignored the lessons of 1918, and then we disregarded warnings issued in the first months of this pandemic. We will never know how many lives could have been saved if we had taken this threat more seriously.”

The number of deaths in our country will go down in history as an American tragedy that was preventable!

Tony

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