The Covid-19 pandemic has become the deadliest disease event in American history, with a death toll surpassing that of the 1918 Spanish flu. The Spanish flu was previously the disease event that caused the biggest loss of life in the United States; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 675,000 Americans died during the 1918 pandemic, in waves of illness that stretched out over roughly two years in this country. According to STAT’s Covid-19 Tracker, Covid deaths stand at more than 675,400. “In terms of raw numbers of deaths, that’s a high number,” said Howard Markel, director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. “And it’s higher still than it should have been, frankly.” U.S. deaths make up roughly 14% of the nearly 4.7 million fatalities that have been reported worldwide in this pandemic to date, even though the country’s population comprises only about 4.2% of the global population. “In the U.S., we are among the worst affected in our class of countries — rich countries with an aging population. But other countries in Europe did poorly as well,” said Cécile Viboud, an infectious diseases epidemiologist who has done a lot of research into deaths from the 1918 flu.
via statnews: Covid-19 overtakes 1918 Spanish flu as deadliest disease in American history