The death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States could exceed that of the 1918 flu pandemic as early as Monday, a situation that many experts say could have been avoided after a successful vaccine was developed.
Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the number of reported deaths in the United States has reached 673768, compared with an estimated 675000 deaths caused by an influenza pandemic a century ago, according to Johns Hopkins University. In the past week, the average daily death toll from the epidemic in the United States was 1970.
The death toll from the pandemic flu that is about to surpass that of a hundred years ago has occurred in the context of the popularity of the Covid-19 vaccine. The vaccine was successfully developed at a record rate, demonstrating extraordinary advances in medical science over the past century. However, about 70 million eligible Americans have rejected the vaccine, many of whom have been encouraged by Republican politicians and conservative media to do so.
"it's painful for so many people to die with modern medicine," said Scripps Translational Research Institute's Eric Topol, who noted that there was no ventilator or vaccine in 1918. "the numbers we are seeing are not at all what the United States should have."
This development also takes place against the backdrop of the rapid spread of the Delta mutant strain and pushing the epidemic in the United States into a dangerous new phase. The Delta strain subverts hopes that the epidemic is over and brings great uncertainty to the coming winter.
Of course, the comparison with 1918 is not entirely appropriate. First, the number of residents in the United States is about three times what it was a century ago, which means that the implied mortality rate is about 1/3 at that time.
John Barry, author of pandemic Influenza: the deadliest pandemic in history, pointed out that most of the victims of the 1918 flu pandemic were young people, while most of COVID-19 's deaths so far were those aged 65 and older, and the pace of the two pandemics was very different. He said that the losses caused by the 1918 epidemic were mainly concentrated in the period of 14-15 weeks lasting in the second half of that year.
"that's much stronger and much scarier," Barry said of the 1918 pandemic. The pressure on COVID-19 's epidemic lasted longer, he said. "the economic loss was more than a few light-years (of the pandemic flu)," he said. "