COVID-19 has now killed as many people in the United States as the 1918 influenza pandemic. It is often cited as the most serious pandemic in recent history. According to the Associated Press..
As of Tuesday (September 21st), more than 676,200 people have died of COVID-19 in the United States. According to the Johns Hopkins Dashboard.. The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 is estimated to have killed about 675,000 people in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)..
However, according to AP, it is not clear how many people died a century ago due to incomplete records and a poor understanding of the cause of the disease.
Related: 20 of the worst fads and pandemics ever
The global COVID-19 mortality rate (approximately 4.7 million deaths to date) is far from the global influenza deaths of 1918, estimated to exceed 50 million. I am.
Of course, the apple-to-apple comparison does not reveal the true picture of either pandemic, as there are many factors that have changed since a century ago.
On the other hand, the population of the United States was about one-third of what it is today. This means that the 1918 flu wiped out much of the population than the COVID-19 pandemic, according to AP. (And the world’s population was about a quarter of what it is today.)
Meanwhile, there have been significant scientific advances since a century ago, including the three currently available. Vaccine against COVID-19 In the United States
Not only was the vaccine unavailable in 1918, but there were no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections at the time, according to AP. The 1918 flu killed far more young and healthy adults than COVID-19.
According to AP, there are currently an average of about 1,900 COVID-related deaths per day in the United States, and the University of Washington predicts an additional 100,000 associated with the disease in the United States by January 1, 2022. Human death has been suggested.
Currently, approximately 64% of the US eligible population (aged 12+) are fully vaccinated with COVID-19.
According to World in Data, only about 43% of the world’s population is vaccinated at least once with the COVID-19 vaccine, and only 2% in low-income countries. (Vaccines are not yet readily available in many countries around the world.)
COVID-19 would not have been much more deadly in the United States, where vaccines are readily available, if more people were vaccinated immediately. “We still have the opportunity to turn it around,” Dr. Jeremy Brown, director of emergency medical research at the National Institutes of Health, told AP. “We often lose track of how lucky we are to take these things for granted.”
It remains unclear how the COVID-19 pandemic is remembered compared to the 1918 flu. You want to say that it wouldn’t remember the worst thing in human history ,.
Anne-Marie Kimball, a former professor of epidemiology at the University of Washington, told AP that “infection control has been significantly enhanced and the ability to support sick people has been significantly improved. There is modern medicine.” rice field. “But we have more people and more maneuverability …. The fear is that the new strain will eventually evade certain vaccine targets.”
Read the story of the original Associated Press here..
Originally published in Live Science.
