Sad milestone: US COVID-19 death toll surpasses that of 1918 pandemic

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 has surpassed that of the 1918 flu pandemic, according to a tracker from Johns Hopkins University, highlighting the extraordinary damage incurred by the current virus.

The U.S. has passed 675,000 deaths, the estimated toll from the 1918 pandemic, which for a century had been the worst pandemic to hit the country.

“The number of reported deaths from Covid in the US will surpass the toll of the 1918 flu pandemic this month,” Tom Frieden, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tweeted earlier this month. “We cannot become hardened to the continuing, and largely preventable, tragedy.”

Deaths from COVID-19 are also far from over. The U.S. is averaging about 2,000 more deaths from the virus every day, according to a New York Times tracker.

Caveat: 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.

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 2 in every 1,000 people.