More Americans Have Died From COVID-19 Than In 1918 Flu Pandemic

ACROSS AMERICA — The coronavirus pandemic has led to more American deaths than the 1918 flu pandemic, several media outlets, including CNN, reported Monday. Numbers from Johns Hopkins University show more than 675,000 people in the United States have died from the virus.

About 675,000 American deaths were totaled in the pandemic of more than a century ago, the deadliest pandemic of the 20th century.

The U.S. population was only about a third of what it is now, however, meaning the flu pandemic has still killed a higher proportion of Americans. But vaccines were also not available as quickly then.

Stephen Kissler, an epidemiologist with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told CNN a number of mistakes than were made in the 1918 pandemic were repeated more than a century later.

"A lot of the mistakes that we definitely fell into in 1918, we hoped we wouldn't fall into in 2020," Kissler said. "We did."

Kissler said he would have been surprised to hear a modern day pandemic would lead to more deaths than the 1918 flu pandemic had he been told that two years ago, but not as much had he been told in April or May 2020, after the spread of the coronavirus was declared a pandemic.

He said the world advancement in technology has created a double-edged sword. While it has helped get information out more readily, the spread of misinformation has hampered efforts to beat the pandemic.

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