Covid-19 live updates U.S. reported deaths surpass toll of 1918 flu pandemic

Covid-19 live updates U.S. reported deaths surpass toll of 1918 flu pandemic

A self inflicted wound my willfully ignorant people who are putting the rest of us in danger.

People walk through the flags of the 'In America: Remember' public art installation, which commemorates all the Americans who have died due to covid-19, near the Washington Monument on Sept. 19, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Al Drago/Getty Images)

More people have died during of covid-19 in the United States than those estimated to have died of influenza during the 1918 pandemic. As of Monday, more than 675,000 U.S. deaths associated with the coronavirus have been reported since Feb. 29, 2020, per a Washington Post tracker.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that’s roughly how many died of influenza in the United States between 1918 and 1919 — along with more than 49 million people globally in the “deadliest pandemic of the 20th century.” (Coronavirus has killed nearly 4.7 million globally.)

That’s a grim milestone, but as The Post’s Aaron Blake explains, it needs to be put into context. The U.S. population is more than three times larger than it was roughly a century ago: While in 1918, 675,000 deaths represented about 1 in 150 Americans, it’s currently 1 in 500. The coronavirus has also killed fewer of the people it infects than the 1918 H1N1 flu virus, although it’s not clear whether “that reflects the relative deadliness of the virus, the advances in health care and mitigation over the past 100 years, or some combination of both,” Blake writes.“