US COVID-19 Death Toll Surpasses That of 1918 Pandemic

Posted by BeauHD

on Monday September 20, 2021 @05:25PM from the compare-and-contrast dept.

• ›

  • About 1/3rd. The US populaton in 1918 was ~103m, vs ~328m today.

    • • Re:

        You have that backwards I think. Having the same deaths with 1/3rd of the population means the 1918 Flu had a higher mortality rate. However, I can't imagine the circumstances were nearly comparable in 1918 as they are today. It makes a cute article, but I struggle to find how it really does much more than that. And as I can already see from comments below my own, gives people fuel for their "See I told you it was all overblown!" rhetoric.

        • Re:

          yup, backwards,

          • Covid is less deadly per capita, but the deaths are also not directly comparable.

            The 1918 influenza was especially deadly to young adults. It killed people in their prime, losing their most productive years, and left children orphaned or with only one parent.

            Covid kills grandpa, not dad.

            • Re:

              Covid kills grandpa, not dad.

              Back in 1918-1919, grandpa would probably already be dead from those comorbidities.

              In other news, my grandma died in the 1918 epidemic, but she would have been in her twenties, I think.

            • Re:

              Try to keep up, deaths are trending to the people in the 30-50 range as they're unvaccinated and Delta hits them hard. The 1918 pandemic was similar with the later waves killing the young.

        • just point out that we hit these numbers after more than 100 years of medical advancement.

          • Re:

            And, on the other hand, population density and mobility increases. It really is difficult to compare the two. In a manner it simply doesn't matter as the death rate is the final determiner of 'badness' and incorporates the current context of medical technology.

          • Re:

            100 years of MEDICAL advancement, yes; MENTAL advancement, not so much.

      • Re:

        The other way around, but those are not comparable figures either IMHO. Your chances of survival in 1918 were way lower than they're today, with modern medical technology.

      • • Re:

          right, I backspaced to change "one third" and forgot to switch the pandemics. Was trying to say covid in between the worst and the other next worse things, but only thus far. It's not over yet and something bad could happen in USA.

  • I mean... it's in the fucking summary for Christ's sake.

    Still, the U.S. population was far smaller a century ago, meaning that the death rate from the 1918 pandemic is still higher than for COVID-19. E. Thomas Ewing, a Virginia Tech history professor, wrote in Health Affairs earlier this year that the death rate from the 1918 pandemic was about six in every 1,000 people, given the U.S. population at the time of around 100 million. The death rate from COVID-19 in the U.S. is about two in every 1,000 people.

    • The crazy thing is

      the death rate is higher even though we have much, much better treatments (not to mention a vaccine available since April, earlier if you were high risk or in healthcare).

      • Re:

        Last I checked, 2/1000 is not higher than 6/1000. The fact that we have much better treatments today is a contributing factor in why the death rate today is 2/1000 today vs. 6/1000 a century ago. The infectiousness of the disease is the other major factor.

    • Re:

      True, but medical tech in 1918 does not even compare to what we have now. So in reality the article and thread is really comparing oranges to apples.

    • • Re:

        6/100 vs 2/100 is vague and not clear ?

  • Re:

    No, it isn't. What is relevant is that they didn't have the medicines or technology to treat people back then. We do now. First figure out how many people would have died from COVID-19 if we didn't have modern treatments, then figure out per capita. Per capita differences likely won't be significant even though we have roughly 3.5 times more people on earth now.

    • • Re:

        It still comes back periodically. 1957 (116K dead out of 172M in USA) and 1968 (100K dead out of 200M) were the worst comebacks.

  • Re: anybody have per-capita #'s?

    Forget covid, they did not have Ivermectin to protect people from horse STDs back then. What was the death rate from horse STD in 1918 vs. today? Why is that not being celebrated as a trump of modern medicine?

    • Re:

      Maybe because it's only effective in Arkansas?

    • Re: anybody have per-capita #'s?

      Horse STDs ? Amongst humans ?

      I guess all that weird porn on the net is actually true...

  • Yes and no

    we have vastly superior medical treatments, and we've had vaccines widely available since April. So per capital isn't really a good comparison.

  • Re:

    Right there in the summary?

  • Re:

    The US had a third the population in 1918, so the per capita is 1/3 what it was then.

    However, I suspect most of that difference is a century of medical advances, a generally healthier population, and people being more educated on how to respond to being sick, rather than a difference is the mortality rate.

  • Re:

    Keep moving the goalposts. But, since you asked, if Mississippi was a country, it would have the second highest per capita deaths [businessinsider.com] in the world due to covid. And their governor has this to say about it [businessinsider.com].

  • Re:

    The article states 2 per 1000 for Covid-19, 6 per 1000 for 1918 flu.

  • Re:

    Yes. The USA shares the top spot with 4 other first world idiots, a bunch of 3rd world shitholes, and a few countries with populations so low that the statistics don't make much sense.

    Feel better now?

  • • • those "Trumper Party" people are more likely to be vaccinated, despite the media narrative

        There's a strong negative correlation at the county level between vaccination levels and whether a county voted for Trump. Here's a look at Colorado's counties [coloradohe...titute.org] as of late June 2021. Healthcare data analyst Charles Gaba charted vaccination rates and 2020 presidential election results per county [twitter.com] across the country and found a strong negative correlation as well, with some outliers, as one should expect from such a large data set. (Note that NJ is much more flat and has had higher numbers, and NC's numbers are kind of broken, but he briefly explains both.)

        • Re:

          The latest conspiracy theory is that liberals are pro-vaccine because they know that many conservatives will automatically take the opposite position, die, and hand them the next election.

          Even their own stupidity is liberals fault.

          • Re:

            For anybody reading the parent comment, here's context about that conspiracy
            https://www.breitbart.com/ente... [breitbart.com]

            Though the grand majority of the commentators are just compaining the vaccine is deadly - rather than blaming the left for reverse phycology killing them.

            • Re:

              So, if the "organized Left" says, "Take the vaccine," it's "reverse psychology," and they want them to not take it and have them die. But if they say, "Don't take the vaccine..." Wait - who am I kidding? No sensible person would say, "Don't take the vaccine." You can't win with these anti-vaxxer clowns.
              
              With apologies to Aldo Nova - probably ahead of the times for many on/. - "So long, but I'm sad to say, that you're only killing yourselves."

        • Re:

          Any numbers after the idea of booster shots started gaining momentum in April are utterly worthless.

      • • • Seat belt laws are a thing because you are not by yourself on the road when you're driving. If your vehicle is subject to a sudden force, a seatbelt keeps you in place so that you can try to regain control... or at least not go flying out of the window and create another hazard on the road.

            Similarly, vaccines prevent the transmission of infectious disease. Sure, they also protect the person who is vaccinated, but that's only part of why they should be required.

            As for pro-choice & pro-vax-mandate being hypocritical... maybe a little. The big difference is that an abortion is a private matter. Not getting a vaccine affects everyone around you.

            • Re:

              Not like seatbelts: more like headlights at night.

            • Re:

              Seat belt laws exist because it's expensive when someone kills themselves on a public road. There have to be inquiries and investigations into why and how it happened. It has little to nothing to do with remaining in control of a vehicle, although that's a good reason too.

          • Re:

            Whether the government has the right to mandate vaccines was decided over a hundred years back, and yes it does, as well as the right to lock up super spreaders.
            And the hypocrisy is the right to life (when it comes to fetuses) people arguing they have the right to indiscriminately kill. Almost like they want to force women to have kids so they can kil them. No fun killing those not yet alive I guess, though admittedly, they do like killing older people. Lots of them seem to be in favor of death panels too.
            H

            • Re:

              There is no hypocrisy to the right to life people, if they are also saying that they have the right to refuse, though you are conflating two different groups of people, that may overlap, but are likely not the same group. The difference is, if you are vaccinated, and someone else is not, you are in very little danger. If they have already had COVID, they are in more danger from the vaccination than from COVOD. There is more chance of someone who has had COVID having negative consequences from the vaccine

    • • • • Re:

            Because... FREEDUMB!

          • Why does the US have a such an outsized portion of all deaths?

            Our deaths per 1mil is 2k, which ranks 21st. Granted, some of those ahead of us are 3rd world and/or very tiny, but we are in the same ballpark as France, UK, Spain, so I question what you mean by 'outsized portion of all deaths'. If you mean TOTAL deaths, the reason is that we have one of the highest populations in the world.

            Also, some countries that have higher populations are either unable/unwilling to give accurate death totals (China, India, etc.). There is no way a poor, cramped country like India only has 300 deaths/1 mil. And although China has more authority to lock down vs. the US, I don't really believe their numbers at all. 3 deaths/1 million? I'm not THAT stupid...

            Two other factors that may have put us on the higher end. First, as a republic of individual states (and freedom to move between states easily), there is less of a cohesive, centralized response to the pandemic, so even if state A locks down like crazy, state B next door could be spreading and bring it with them when the visit state A. Second, we are an obese nation, and there is some correlation between obesity and severity of COVID symptoms.

            • Re:

              Firstly, you're ahead of France, the UK, and Spain by a significant sum, both in terms of per capita and in total (which in theory would mean your per capita figures move slower).

              Secondly while you self gratify I advise you to open up the graphs of each country, especially the countries actually above you like Belgium, Italy, and Croatia. What you find may startle you.

              You see those countries you compare yourself to had the largest portion of deaths *at the start* of the pandemic. Compare that to the USA whi

              • Good graphs

                This is one of the few sites with decent graphs per capita.

                https://ourworldindata.org/exp... [ourworldindata.org]

                UK is a bit more than the USA, but USA figures are very unreliable, gathered by republican states. India's numbers are a fiction. China's numbers would be higher than stated but still very low. Australia had a few cases early on when it got into old age homes, very few recently.

                Interesting to compare UK death vs cases. Cases are way up recently (due to Delta) but deaths are not (due to vaccine).

              • Re: anybody have per-capita #'s?

                Bear in mind it's impossible to call the virus insignificant whilst comparing it unfavourably with 1918.

                The cynics, along with those trying to make it a Liberal virus or a left-wing conspiracy, are forced to either refute the virus exists or to try to spin the figures to look good.

            • Re:

              The only even remotely reliable way to measure the deaths across the globe is to look at excess mortality compared to normal years. Many of the largest countries in the world outside the US either cannot or will not accurately count and report COVID-19 deaths. I don't know if any studies have thoroughly looked at this across the globe yet. The problem, there too, is we still have to rely on individual countries death / census data which may be just as fictional.

            • Re:

              There goes my karma... but if you Google for "US Covid unregistered death toll" then you will find evidence that the US is under-reporting a lot of Covid-19 deaths. Several reasons are given for this, for example local Republican leadership that wants to avoid bad numbers. Many other countries (Russia al of a sudden has way more lung-disease-deaths) are also under-reporting.

              Also a number of countries in the the top 20 (worldometer.info) have over-reported deaths because things like a heart attack or stroke

          • Still, I can not help but feel this data is off.

            Facts don't match with my beliefs..

            Maybe it is that the US incentivized reporting deaths l WITH covid, as opposed to reporting deaths FROM covid? This data doesnâ(TM)t measure up when put in the global context.

            So I will change the facts

            We should not be leading in deaths, we should be trailing, by all reasonable indicators.

            If you make a prediction based on your understanding of things and then the facts are different, the scientific thing to do is assume that your understanding is wrong and go back and change that.

            • Re:

              Actually, there is not much of a difference between "dying with CoViD" and "dying from CoViD". People die of multiple organ failure in those cases, and if there is an inflammation of the lung associated, caused by an infection with SARS-CoV2, it's CoViD19 (a.k.a. Corona Virus Disease of 2019).

              • Actually, there is not much of a difference between "dying with CoViD" and "dying from CoViD". People die of multiple organ failure in those cases, and if there is an inflammation of the lung associated, caused by an infection with SARS-CoV2, it's CoViD19 (a.k.a. Corona Virus Disease of 2019).

                Not sure what you are trying to say here overall, but your point is well made that there is a difference between dying with and dying of the infection but it's a difficult difference. That's why, rather than just go on test results other statistical means are used. These show clearly that testing results undermeasure the number of people who are dying earlier than they would die otherwise due to SARS-COV-2. E.g. if the disease affects your brain and causes you to have a car crash, that will be recorded as a normal accident when actually it's a death which would not have happened without the disease and should be seen as multi-causal.

                The grandparent is trying to claim that deaths caused SARS-COV-2 are over-recorded. That's a political lie. We know and can measure that the opposite is true.

          • Re:

            Maybe the answer is that you have difficulty with numbers and math. I'll try to explain this in both plain English and with some data that is comparable.

            First, the nations that have a lot of travellers and a lot of economic activity are the "first world" nations. And that is where COVID-19 has hit hardest. Also numbers only go up, not down so the longer you have had an uncontrolled outbreak the larger your number. Again these nations where a lot of travel occurs every day tend to have the worst numbers. Oth

            • Re:

              Or you could argue that countries that do a lot of COVID-19 testing and correctly record "cause of death" as COVID-19 have been "hit the hardest"...

              Africa - population 1.2 billion
              covid cases 8,242,857
              covid deaths 206,897

              Europe - population 746 million
              covid cases 57,777,542
              covid deaths 1,206,251

              https://www.worldometers.info/... [worldometers.info]

          • • Re: anybody have per-capita #'s?

              No, covid deaths aren't on Biden, they're on the idiots who refuse to get vaccinated. In fact, said idiots are the ones who are dying. Poetic justice of sorts.

  • • Re:

      How does handing out free vaccines give the government any more power?

• Have we got the numbers in from Africa and India?

  • Re:

    Would you trust them?

    • Re:

      In hindsight. I wouldn't expect them to be up to date while the crisis is still in progress, but eventually I do expect they'll be able to take a decent count.

  • Re:

    Numbers from Africa... well, either google them or make up your own, there ain't a big difference in accuracy.

• Given the population in 1918 was around 103 million people, using absolute death counts is the wrong way to compare both pandemics. On the other hand basing it as relative percentage of the population in each time period would be more valid.

  • Re:

    ...which is why the summary included it? It's had about a 1/3 the death rate.

    • Re:

      '...which is why the summary included it? It's had about a 1/3 the death rate."
      Not in the headline. And guess who will repeat the headlines. Stupid people and those that do not bitch about the headline.

  • Re:

    In one sense yes, in another sense a life doesn't become less valuable just because the person lived in a larger country.

    Of course, the 1918 flu was famous for killing otherwise healthy people in their prime. So if you look at years of life lost [wikipedia.org] the 1918 epidemic is probably still far worse on the scale of tragedies.

    Still, it is important to step back and realize the just how many people have died and are still dying of COVID-19.

  • since medical science has advanced in 100 years, meaning vastly better treatment options. What's interesting/terrifying here is that despite of all those advances we still hit the #s from 1918.
    
    And we're not done by a long shot. Best case things start to peter out in November as the people who are gonna die... well die. But there's some who don't think that's going to happen (the petering out, the dying is definitely happening). And all that assumes no new variants, which given 1/3rd of our population (and most of the rest of the world) is currently acting as a breeding ground out of some deluded view of freedom isn't unlikely. That nonsense is how we got Delta (e.g. India opened back up and did massive religious festivals in the lead up to an election).

• If we didn't have modern medicines, respirator machines, and properly trained medical professionals it would have been much, much worse. Think New York City in March, April, and May of 2020 where up to 800 people a day were dying from it.

  • Re:

    Yup. Almost certainly anyone sent to the ICU (let alone intubated) wouldn't have survived with 1918 medical care. Most people who were hospitalized wouldn't have made it either. That's a whole lot of people.

    • Re:

      And with winter comes drier air and more people indoors, the conditions it spreads more easily in. Unless we get the case load under control we’re headed toward such massive shortages in ICU beds, supplies, and staff that we won’t have to guess what the quality of care was like without modern improvements.

  • Re:

    in 1918, germ theory was still new, and knowledge of viruses was extremely sparse as they had only been discovered less than 30 years previously. Washing hands by doctors was newish still. In some sense that time was still in a medical revolution towards understanding what really causes a disease and what to do about it.

  • Re:

    If we didn't have modern transportation methods, transoceanic airplanes, and regular long-distance travel between states there would have been much, much less spread. A ship leaving China in 1918 with Covid aboard would have likely not arrived unscathed after weeks at sea.
    
    If there wasn't a world war going on in 1918, there would likely have been much less spread then.
    
    It's interesting to compare numbers and is especially useful for clickbait titles. There are a lot of differences between now and th

  • Actually no

    Most of the people who died of Covid are above the age of 80. In 1918 these people did not exist as people died of other things before reaching 80. An 80 year old was a rare thing. If Covid had hit the 1918 population there would have been very few deaths. So you can thank modern medicine for creating a large population of 80 yr olds and thus a large covid body count.

    • Re:

      There's a lot of younger people who with some oxygen came out of it OK, without oxygen, perhaps not. And most of the people dying here are now 30-50 year olds who are unvaccinated. The old people are mostly vaccinated otherwise the numbers would be much higher. Just like the first wave of the Spanish flu mostly killed old people and later waves killed young people, Covid now has Delta which is way more infectious and somewhat deadlier and who knows about new variants, Mu sounds like it can evade vaccination

  • • Re:

      > If COVID had happened 100 years ago the death rate would have been far higher than it is now.

      I'm not entirely sure about that, just because population density and ability to travel is so much higher now.
      By all means, if COVID materialised in 1918, it would be much more deadly to anybody who caught it, but I think it would spread less.

      Though I'm also pretty sure all the willfully unvaccinated filling up hospitals aren't appreciative of the advancements in medicine.

      • Re:

        Remember there was a world war winding down with lots of troops being transported across the Atlantic and continents, crammed into ships and railway cars. I also saw some pictures from Vancouver during the pandemic, sidewalk to sidewalk people, most mask less, watching some guy scale a building. The article I saw that in was comparing Vancouver (hardly any masks) and Seattle (lots of masks).

• So, I'm one of the few people I know who will openly admit to any concerns about the vaccines. My views are genuine, but these days, it doesn't matter. You're a troll for merely having thoughts which stray from the consensus. I'm insane, though, and can't help but have these thoughts, and all the people who call themselves "tolerant" and "diverse" like to point out what a piece of crazy shit I am. They like to say I''m a Troll and I deserve to die. It's empathetic and morally superior, or so I'm told. I

  • Re:

    I don't believe you are insane - or maybe not totally:)

    With the example you cite on how Pfizer has behaved in the past and the limitations they put on providing the vaccines for free to poor countries just to maximize their profit, mistrust towards big pharma is totally warranted!

    Regarding the vaccine itself and the science behind though I personally believe its safe and sound.

    It was not actually big pharma who developed the technology (mRNA), but a small company in Germany that was initially working on a

  • Re:

    Being hesitant about vaccines was reasonable until they reached widespread use and we had enough data to show that they are a lot safer than not getting them. Now it's just foolish.

  • Re:

    If it quacks like a gaslighting alt-right troll....

    And boy do you quack a lot.

    BTW, Pfizer didn't get blanket immunity for fraud and negligence, just some civil liability protection. The company could still be fined and the officers sent to jail. If any serious malfeasance ever came to light everybody on both sides of the red-blue divide could make serious political bank by crushing them. It would be literally suicidal on so many levels to engage in such a conspiracy at this moment in history.

• In 1918 was 53 years.
  Today more like 78 years.

  All covid deaths except about 37k of them have been in people over 50.

• Back then, people were more isolated to their communities.
  
  You didn't have nearly as many people traveling the country and the world by train, car, plane, and ship, like we can now.
  
  This left each region isolated and able to handle the pandemic according to their own local laws and opinions.
• The COVID-19 crisis is setting a new standard concerning inveterate human stupidity. Despite our big brains and what have so far achieved, there is plenty of evidence now to support the view that we are the stupidest animal species in the planet.

• This is what the "fact checkers" call misinformation -- technically true but misleading. US population in 1918 was 103 million; today it is 333 million. So the per capita rate for Covid is still far below what is was for the Spanish Flu.

• • by Derec01 ( 1668942 ) on Monday September 20, 2021 @05:45PM (#61815081)

    Given the overall data, it really isn't unreliable unless you think that the CDC is inventing dead people out of whole cloth.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/... [cdc.gov]

    If you scroll down on that page, it shows a plot of total deaths per week over the last few years. Again, total deaths, regardless of cause. The line indicates a level that would be counted as abnormally high - the average is lower. The toll of the bad flu season in 2018 is clear, and so is the impact of COVID-19. The total deaths are largely consistent with the attributed toll.

    I can't stress enough that this data isn't vulnerable to errors in the "cause of death" attribution.

    • • Re:

        And do you believe hospitals are literally killing people to get payouts then? Otherwise explain the huge excess of deaths over the past 18 months.

        • Re:

          Learn to read. They are not killing people but reporting every death they can report as Covid. People die in hospitals all the time, hospitals dont have to kill them.

        • • Re:

            Can you point to at least 5 of these reports from different sites?
            No I'm not going to Bing them myself.

          • Re:

            And the huge excess of deaths?

      • Re:

        That might work in the USA that way (however it sounds not plausible). It definitely does not work like this in Germany.

  • Re:

    Data from around the world corroborates the numbers in the US as being highly likely an accurate reflection of what is happening.
    
    Or are you one of those people who thinks that the entire world of medical science has conspired against some US morons? Pull your head out of your ass snowflake.

  • Re:

    I think COVID deaths in the US are probably under-counted. There are a lot of people desperate to have anything other than COVID listed on their death certificate. There are people who die of "heart attacks" or "kidney failure" which are actually affects of COVID. And that's not even counting people who are currently dying of otherwise survivable factors but can't get a hospital bed, or people who will die of preventable diseases in the coming years except they couldn't get screening now due to capacity. Th

• • Re:

    That seems weird, especially with a negative test (when people tell you stories beware of games of "telephone"). It takes more than a positive test for a death to be attributed to COVID, and most evidence suggests that the true death toll is higher. In fact, the CDC estimates 656,460 - 830,443 in the US [cdc.gov]. You can try to handwave a few excess deaths away due to lockdown related causes, but it's pretty hard to pretend several hundred thousand extra people died during the pandemic due to reasons other than COVI

    • • Hospitals get a pile of money from the feds for each case, and another pile for each death.

        A little extra, not a pile [politifact.com].

        And CDC guidelines for reporting COVID deaths say that any patience who the doctor believes has symptoms consistent with COVID should report it as a COVID death. So an 80 year old chain smoker with emphysema who coughs a lot and is hit by a bus can, under CDC guidelines, be reported as a COVID death - and the hospital is financially rewarded for doing so.

        I know two people who had loved ones die last year from different forms of cancer (and there's no question what actually killed either), who had to threaten legal action to prevent them from being reported as COVID deaths.

        Maybe it's underreported. And maybe it's overreported. It's impossible to tell, because nobody is keeping accurate records. On purpose.

        I of course have no knowledge on what happened with those particular deaths.

        But you skated past the major point of my post, the 650-830 thousand extra deaths in the US during the pandemic. Those people clearly died, and they died of something. It's really hard to account for those deaths using any explanation other than COVID.

      • Re:

        And yet when you graph excess mortality last year after removing all reported COVID deaths you still end up with man thousands of excess deaths compared to normal.

        Everyone keeps repeating this talking point that COVID deaths are being over reported in the USA, and yet the reality is they are still massively underreported when you just look at raw statistics.

        Just because that old person looked after by a carer who was hospitalised due to COVID died of starvation because he wasn't able to feed himself and not

• • Re:

    I imagine if that was the way of delivery there'd be more vaccinated.

  • Re:

    They can't because the "liberals" want them to get it. So to own the "libs", they're not going to do it.

    No, really. That is the logic [imgur.com] they're using to explain why a certain group of people are refusing to get vaccinated [mediaite.com].

    • Re:

      You know, I just don't get why Trump supporters wouldn't get the Trump vaccine. Even liberals have to admit they're pushing one of Donald Trump's ideas. Given the news coverage of the vaccine, it's the next best thing to winning a second term. Right-wingers have a constant opportunity to remind liberals of this... and yet, they're quiet?

      If I was rabid Trump supporter, I'd probably have "Vaccinated by Trump" tattooed on my forehead. Or wear a red hat with the text, "Make Vaccines Great Again".

    • Re:

      Seriously? It is hard to top that level of stupidity.

    • Re:

      Yes, definitely. All of us that are supposed "lefties" that don't support the violence in our cities nor the drone strike that killed children, and have begged, pleaded, and demonstrated the safety of the vaccine by taking it at our earliest convenience are definitely trying to reverse psychology to prevent Trump supporters from taking the life saving vaccine.

      The logic loops in that posting are astronomical.

• • Re:

    The 2nd paragraph discusses casualties per capita.

  • In 1918 there was no vaccine for the flu. At the time, they thought the flu was caused by bacteria and antibiotics hadn't been invented. They didn't know what viruses were as they were too small to see with a microscope. Towards the end of the pandemic, they were treating people by using blood transfusions from a flu survivor, but didn't fully understand blood types or matching.

    Today we have electron microscopes, mRNA vaccines and DNA sequencing technologies. We have a number of safe and effective vaccines that a large swathe of the population refuse to take because YouTube told them not to.

    Comparing apples to apples, the USA has a death rate per capita that's 1/3rd what it was from the 1918 pandemic, however this pandemic isn't over yet. Don't you think we should be doing better than that with all the advancements that science has provided for us over the last 100 years?

    • Re:

      Not really, and I'm thankful it's not at bad an 1918.
      To get the same death rate as 1918 we'd "need" something like 1.8 million, and yes, I agree it ain't over yet by a long shot we could get close to that... Too many screaming for their free-dumb.

    • We are in the first innings

      In 1918 the flu pandemic first killed only old and young. It didnt cause a panic. By next year it had mutated into a variant that caused an interferon storm meaning those with strong immune systems died from anaphylactic shock. It started killing more of the young and fit. Today we are still at a variant which kills the old. Let it spread around long enough and we will get a variant that kills the young and healthy.

      
      
      Thats when we should compare numbers.

• • Re:

    Check the ratio on this FB post by a Detroit news org.... https://www.facebook.com/wxyzd... [facebook.com]

• • Re:

    For that to be true then you have to find a new disease that killed those people. Because the number of excess deaths in the US in 2019, 2020 and so far 2021 is even higher than the official covid-19 numbers.