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In absolute number terms it's more deaths in total in the USA than the Spanish Flu (675k deaths total since it began), HIV (700k deaths total since it began) or

In absolute number terms it's more deaths in total in the USA than the Spanish Flu (675k deaths total since it began), HIV (700k deaths total since it began) or any other pandemic. Population has increased so the US did lose a smaller percentage of population but on the other hand Spanish Flu didn't have a vaccine to stop it one year in. Hopefully enough of the population takes the vaccine now to stop this. Note this also means COVID has been the number 1 cause of fatalities in total. The other top killers are heart disease and cancer. Heart disease kills ~660k a year and cancer 600k a year. We're not that much over 1 year now since the first cases in the USA. This means that COVID is absolute top cause of fatalities at the moment. For anyone that may feel the need to mention car crashes, guns or drugs those don't even rank in the top 10 of fatalities in the USA. Something to consider if you see anyone trying to downplay this.

void_mint 5y ago
Most of the people trying to downplay covid aren't interested in logic and reasoning, though.
Herodotus38 5y ago
Also, during the influenza of 1918 there wasn’t widespread availability of oxygen. If we were still at that level of technology there would be significantly higher mortality. You can see a bit of this play out in India where people are dying who shouldn’t be.
nostromo 5y ago
Both HIV and the Spanish Flu killed young people with most of their lives ahead of them. All early loss of life is tragic, but the number of deaths alone isn't the only measure. If you calculate the loss of lifespan, HIV would blow Covid out of the water, because the median age at death would mean ~40 or 50 years of life lost. Covid's median age at death is so high, it's often above a country's life expectancy. It's also worth noting the US population has more than tripled since 1918 and grown by a third since 1990. This isn't meant to downplay Covid's impact, but to make a more nuanced comparison with past pandemics.
Teknoman117 5y ago
It was #3 in 2020 even though widespread testing only started in March. Seriously frightening stuff. Imagine if we went from zero heart disease or zero cancer deaths to present numbers in the span of one year... https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm
- dragontamer 5y ago
  Heart disease and cancer aren't even singular diseases. Hell, even the Flu is a combination of diseases: TypeA, TypeC, etc. etc. Even Flu-TypeA is a combination of different diseases: H3N2 (Bird Flu) and H1N1 (Swine Flu) are both Flu-TypeA. For a singular disease + minor mutations (COVID19 vs B.1.1.7 vs P.1 extremely similar and covered by the same vaccine) to cause such a death count is pretty remarkable.
mywittyname 5y ago
>Something to consider if you see anyone trying to downplay this. Most of the downplaying I've seen has revolved around the idea that those who died would have, "died anyway" from some other ailment or that hospitals are finding any reason they can to attribute deaths to covid. So, while you have a great argument, I doubt you'll change any minds because those who disagree flat out reject your premise.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  For the former, if someone is actually willing to listen to evidence, you can cite them numbers of average years of life lost per covid death (~15).
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >you can cite them numbers of average years of life lost per covid death That's practically inviting them to cite back the average life lost from the 1918 flu. If you're trying to counter someone who's downplaying Covid that is probably not something you should invite them to do.
    - AnotherGoodName 5y ago
      That's fine though. If they point out that COVID is merely in the same order of magnitude but not objectively worse than Spanish Flu then the point that COVID should not be downplayed has been won.
    - Revery42 5y ago
      I believe there are a significant amount of these people that won't actually argue that just because the Spanish flu was worse in this way that the Covid pandemic isn't a problem.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      As the other poster said, if that's the argument you're resorting to, I would say you've already lost. I've found it is helpful to count by equivalent number of deaths to something that the person has actually experienced, as it is way too easy to brush away deaths that occurred in 1918. For instance, it's as if you took the number of years of life lost in 9/11 and multiplied it by 120.
arberx 5y ago
To add to this, looking strictly at deaths, neglects the long term affects and people with severe but none-fatal cases. Not to mention the capacity issues associated with Covid. "cAsE fAtAliTy rAtE iS oNlY 1%" is a horrible metric to base any policy off of.
tunesmith 5y ago
I had no idea about HIV deaths, I would have guessed it would be 2x-3x COVID deaths. I don't think that means "HIV had a smaller impact than I thought", I think that means COVID is bigger than I thought. We get desensitized to the numbers. Thanks for the perspective.
- cronix 5y ago
  HIV is a lot harder to spread than airborne viruses. But, imagine how much worse it would have been if it was airborne.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
We'll have to wait 20+yr for the controversy to simmer down but I bet when you run the numbers using a metric like YPLL (which is the typical metric used for these sorts of comparisons) the difference between Covid and other big pandemic outbreaks over history is going to be more minor.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  Very back of hand numbers, but, assuming this article is true (haven't looked into it) 900,000 death * 15 yll/death [0] = 13.5 million YLL vs ~63 million YLL for Spanish Flu and 0.5 million YLL for typical flu season [1] [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83040-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83040-3 [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843747/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843747/
  - username90 5y ago
    Flu seasons before vaccines were much worse than now though, it was like having covid every single year. The Spanish flu was about an order of magnitude worse than the normal flu seasons which is why it was so devastating. > 900,000 death * 15 yll/death [0] = 13.5 million YLL Right, so an average American lost 0.03 years of their life due to covid. I guess some thinks everything they did last year to save that 0.02 or so years was worth it. Basically you save a week by social distancing and locking down for a year.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      This is the number of years lost with social distancing. You could make this same argument about anything that causes large amounts of deaths.
      - username90 5y ago
        Places that didn't do social distancing didn't lose much more, there is no evidence that social distancing saved more than I estimated here. My estimate was even very generous in your favour since I estimated death without social distancing to be the worst in the world. But we could estimate to be roughly the death rate in Florida, in which case most of the social distancing did basically nothing.
screye 5y ago
Remember that life expectancy went from 60 -> 80 over the last century. 80% of the deaths have been from folks aged 65+. So, it is arguable that the Spanish flu would have killed a lot more if the average lifespan was higher.
- gilbetron 5y ago
  It's an interesting point. Spanish Flu hit younger people, so having more older people might not have affected the numbers much. On the other hand, maybe having so many old people with covid affected which variant traveled around.
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  It affected younger people more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Patterns_of_fatality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Patterns_of_fatali... > The pandemic mostly killed young adults. In 1918–1919, 99% of pandemic influenza deaths in the U.S. occurred in people under 65, and nearly half of deaths were in young adults 20 to 40 years old.
neither_color 5y ago
I'm not trying to downplay it, I believe the official CDC counts, but some additional considerations are: Is the high total death count related directly to our response(or lack thereof), or to our higher population of people pre-disposed/vulnerable to this virus? For the past few months the focus has been on people ignoring lockdowns, ignoring bans on gatherings, vaccine hesitance etc. but it seems that, based on the co-morbidities, we were an already largely unhealthy population to begin with. We shouldn't downplay the progress we've made while we're at it. 100 million vaccinations is quite an accomplishment. If we're going to beat ourselves up for having the top total deaths(while not being in the top 20 per capita), we should pat ourselves on the back for that one. Getting 100 million people to do anything is hard.
agumonkey 5y ago
To be fair, I feel it's been naturally downplayed already. It's really not shocking anybody anymore. There's a weird fuzzy average life that emerged where most people are just waiting for the thing to go away and the casualties have become numbers.
tomp 5y ago
> Something to consider if you see anyone trying to downplay this. It's invalid reasoning to use this study to "upplay" the pandemic. It includes deaths due to depressions and delayed medical interventions, which you could argue isn't the result of COVID directly, but the result of lockdowns. So when people use this study to claim "see, this many lives were lost, we were right to institute lockdowns" - that's circular reasoning, part of the reason so many lives were lost is because of lockdowns.
- treeman79 5y ago
  Number saved due to lockdown Number died due to lock down Personally I lost access to badly needed medical care due to lockdown. Was quite scary. Eventually got Covid. Sucked but nothing compared to what else I’ve been through. So initially was dismissive. However definitely some lasting changes to my clotting levels. I have to be perfect with blood thinners these days, we’re before covid I could fudge with them.
  - txsoftwaredev 5y ago
    "Personally I lost access to badly needed medical care due to lockdown. Was quite scary." My nearly 70 year old mother is in the same boat. She recently dealt with breast cancer treatments (a rare form) and thankfully was given the all clear before covid. She still needed to do follow up visits, more testing etc. but due to covid was told to stay away. Even though she was more comfortable with the risk of getting covid vs. ensuring her cancer is in remission they wouldn't see her.
- standardUser 5y ago
  If there had been no mitigation efforts the death toll would have skyrocketed as our healthcare systems collapsed.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    You say that, and they said it (only 90s kids will remember "fifteen days to slow the spread") but as of right now, it's a truism. Maybe the lockdown worked to ease the stress on the medical system. Maybe only the first 15 days of lockdown did that, or 30. I highly doubt that the entire year of lockdowns saved the medical system, and I would be willing to bet the effectiveness of the lockdowns in preventing a collapse of the medical system ended within the first 3 months. So suppose that's true, 3/4ths of the lockdown and all the mental health and depression related deaths associated with it were unnecessary. I don't know when the lockdowns stopped being effective in protecting the medical system, but I know it wasn't this morning. Some amount of those deaths are attributed to lockdowns that were unnecessary. Also, you can't quantify the hypothetical death toll in that scenario in any real numbers, to say "would have skyrocketed" is unfounded. I could understand "would've been higher" that sounds reasonable.
maerF0x0 5y ago
> Something to consider if you see anyone trying to downplay this. I admit I'm the morbid one in the group, memento mori and all. But I think the real stat we should track is years of lost life expectancy. That's the only statistic that makes sense when doing cross disease examinations. Not speaking specifically about covid, but more generally, something which primarily kills young people is much bigger deal than something which primarily kills old people.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  I wonder if that measure should be used for criminal justice as well. As well as showing that killing an old person is less harmful, it also excludes babies. Both these groups seem to have lives that are worth less even to themselves and so it's (however distasteful) not as bad if they die. We already do that with abortion by valuing an unborn baby's life less.
  - username90 5y ago
    Many places already has laws around infanticide which is much lower than manslaughter. Canada for example sentences mothers to at most 5 years with no minimum for killing their baby.
- jschwartzi 5y ago
  YLL is a horrifying metric because it values someone who is 20 over someone who is 60. The only argument I can see for its "usefulness" as a statistic is if you want to imply that the old are less useful than the young. This kind of statement about the bare utility of a human life is the same statement that underlies a lot of how we have treated the disabled or those on welfare in the past. And it only makes sense if you think about a human life in terms of its economic usefulness as some sort of cog in the economic machine that wears out and can be discarded safely after age 67.
  - orangecat 5y ago
    The only argument I can see for its "usefulness" as a statistic is if you want to imply that the old are less useful than the young. It's not about "usefulness", it's that saving the life of a young person produces a larger benefit in terms of expected future years of life. Take the extreme case: if a building is on fire and you can only rescue one person, would you be indifferent between saving the life of a 10 year old child versus a 90 year old with terminal cancer?
jollybean 5y ago
It's also greater than all of US military combat deaths for every war combined i.e. Civil War, WW1/2, Korea, Vietnam etc.. And think of how much concern (legitimately so) we have for them.
- nonameiguess 5y ago
  US Civil War death toll is estimated between 620,000 and 750,000, which is higher than the official Covid toll so far. It was also much more highly concentrated in a small number of states in a country that was far less populated.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    That's not 'combat deaths' though, that's 'total deaths'. In those wars, a huge number of people died from things other than direct combat. Here are the numbers [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...

void_mint 5y ago

Most of the people trying to downplay covid aren't interested in logic and reasoning, though.

Herodotus38 5y ago

Also, during the influenza of 1918 there wasn’t widespread availability of oxygen. If we were still at that level of technology there would be significantly higher mortality. You can see a bit of this play out in India where people are dying who shouldn’t be.

nostromo 5y ago

Both HIV and the Spanish Flu killed young people with most of their lives ahead of them. All early loss of life is tragic, but the number of deaths alone isn't the only measure. If you calculate the loss of lifespan, HIV would blow Covid out of the water, because the median age at death would mean ~40 or 50 years of life lost. Covid's median age at death is so high, it's often above a country's life expectancy. It's also worth noting the US population has more than tripled since 1918 and grown by a third since 1990. This isn't meant to downplay Covid's impact, but to make a more nuanced comparison with past pandemics.

Teknoman117 5y ago

It was #3 in 2020 even though widespread testing only started in March. Seriously frightening stuff. Imagine if we went from zero heart disease or zero cancer deaths to present numbers in the span of one year... https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm

dragontamer 5y ago
Heart disease and cancer aren't even singular diseases. Hell, even the Flu is a combination of diseases: TypeA, TypeC, etc. etc. Even Flu-TypeA is a combination of different diseases: H3N2 (Bird Flu) and H1N1 (Swine Flu) are both Flu-TypeA. For a singular disease + minor mutations (COVID19 vs B.1.1.7 vs P.1 extremely similar and covered by the same vaccine) to cause such a death count is pretty remarkable.

mywittyname 5y ago

>Something to consider if you see anyone trying to downplay this. Most of the downplaying I've seen has revolved around the idea that those who died would have, "died anyway" from some other ailment or that hospitals are finding any reason they can to attribute deaths to covid. So, while you have a great argument, I doubt you'll change any minds because those who disagree flat out reject your premise.

whimsicalism 5y ago
For the former, if someone is actually willing to listen to evidence, you can cite them numbers of average years of life lost per covid death (~15).
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >you can cite them numbers of average years of life lost per covid death That's practically inviting them to cite back the average life lost from the 1918 flu. If you're trying to counter someone who's downplaying Covid that is probably not something you should invite them to do.
  - AnotherGoodName 5y ago
    That's fine though. If they point out that COVID is merely in the same order of magnitude but not objectively worse than Spanish Flu then the point that COVID should not be downplayed has been won.
  - Revery42 5y ago
    I believe there are a significant amount of these people that won't actually argue that just because the Spanish flu was worse in this way that the Covid pandemic isn't a problem.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    As the other poster said, if that's the argument you're resorting to, I would say you've already lost. I've found it is helpful to count by equivalent number of deaths to something that the person has actually experienced, as it is way too easy to brush away deaths that occurred in 1918. For instance, it's as if you took the number of years of life lost in 9/11 and multiplied it by 120.

arberx 5y ago

To add to this, looking strictly at deaths, neglects the long term affects and people with severe but none-fatal cases. Not to mention the capacity issues associated with Covid. "cAsE fAtAliTy rAtE iS oNlY 1%" is a horrible metric to base any policy off of.

tunesmith 5y ago

I had no idea about HIV deaths, I would have guessed it would be 2x-3x COVID deaths. I don't think that means "HIV had a smaller impact than I thought", I think that means COVID is bigger than I thought. We get desensitized to the numbers. Thanks for the perspective.

cronix 5y ago
HIV is a lot harder to spread than airborne viruses. But, imagine how much worse it would have been if it was airborne.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

We'll have to wait 20+yr for the controversy to simmer down but I bet when you run the numbers using a metric like YPLL (which is the typical metric used for these sorts of comparisons) the difference between Covid and other big pandemic outbreaks over history is going to be more minor.

whimsicalism 5y ago
Very back of hand numbers, but, assuming this article is true (haven't looked into it) 900,000 death * 15 yll/death [0] = 13.5 million YLL vs ~63 million YLL for Spanish Flu and 0.5 million YLL for typical flu season [1] [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83040-3 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-83040-3 [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843747/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2843747/
- username90 5y ago
  Flu seasons before vaccines were much worse than now though, it was like having covid every single year. The Spanish flu was about an order of magnitude worse than the normal flu seasons which is why it was so devastating. > 900,000 death * 15 yll/death [0] = 13.5 million YLL Right, so an average American lost 0.03 years of their life due to covid. I guess some thinks everything they did last year to save that 0.02 or so years was worth it. Basically you save a week by social distancing and locking down for a year.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    This is the number of years lost with social distancing. You could make this same argument about anything that causes large amounts of deaths.
    - username90 5y ago
      Places that didn't do social distancing didn't lose much more, there is no evidence that social distancing saved more than I estimated here. My estimate was even very generous in your favour since I estimated death without social distancing to be the worst in the world. But we could estimate to be roughly the death rate in Florida, in which case most of the social distancing did basically nothing.

screye 5y ago

Remember that life expectancy went from 60 -> 80 over the last century. 80% of the deaths have been from folks aged 65+. So, it is arguable that the Spanish flu would have killed a lot more if the average lifespan was higher.

gilbetron 5y ago
It's an interesting point. Spanish Flu hit younger people, so having more older people might not have affected the numbers much. On the other hand, maybe having so many old people with covid affected which variant traveled around.
CodeGlitch 5y ago
It affected younger people more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Patterns_of_fatality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Patterns_of_fatali... > The pandemic mostly killed young adults. In 1918–1919, 99% of pandemic influenza deaths in the U.S. occurred in people under 65, and nearly half of deaths were in young adults 20 to 40 years old.

neither_color 5y ago

I'm not trying to downplay it, I believe the official CDC counts, but some additional considerations are: Is the high total death count related directly to our response(or lack thereof), or to our higher population of people pre-disposed/vulnerable to this virus? For the past few months the focus has been on people ignoring lockdowns, ignoring bans on gatherings, vaccine hesitance etc. but it seems that, based on the co-morbidities, we were an already largely unhealthy population to begin with. We shouldn't downplay the progress we've made while we're at it. 100 million vaccinations is quite an accomplishment. If we're going to beat ourselves up for having the top total deaths(while not being in the top 20 per capita), we should pat ourselves on the back for that one. Getting 100 million people to do anything is hard.

agumonkey 5y ago

To be fair, I feel it's been naturally downplayed already. It's really not shocking anybody anymore. There's a weird fuzzy average life that emerged where most people are just waiting for the thing to go away and the casualties have become numbers.

tomp 5y ago

> Something to consider if you see anyone trying to downplay this. It's invalid reasoning to use this study to "upplay" the pandemic. It includes deaths due to depressions and delayed medical interventions, which you could argue isn't the result of COVID directly, but the result of lockdowns. So when people use this study to claim "see, this many lives were lost, we were right to institute lockdowns" - that's circular reasoning, part of the reason so many lives were lost is because of lockdowns.

treeman79 5y ago
Number saved due to lockdown Number died due to lock down Personally I lost access to badly needed medical care due to lockdown. Was quite scary. Eventually got Covid. Sucked but nothing compared to what else I’ve been through. So initially was dismissive. However definitely some lasting changes to my clotting levels. I have to be perfect with blood thinners these days, we’re before covid I could fudge with them.
- txsoftwaredev 5y ago
  "Personally I lost access to badly needed medical care due to lockdown. Was quite scary." My nearly 70 year old mother is in the same boat. She recently dealt with breast cancer treatments (a rare form) and thankfully was given the all clear before covid. She still needed to do follow up visits, more testing etc. but due to covid was told to stay away. Even though she was more comfortable with the risk of getting covid vs. ensuring her cancer is in remission they wouldn't see her.
standardUser 5y ago
If there had been no mitigation efforts the death toll would have skyrocketed as our healthcare systems collapsed.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  You say that, and they said it (only 90s kids will remember "fifteen days to slow the spread") but as of right now, it's a truism. Maybe the lockdown worked to ease the stress on the medical system. Maybe only the first 15 days of lockdown did that, or 30. I highly doubt that the entire year of lockdowns saved the medical system, and I would be willing to bet the effectiveness of the lockdowns in preventing a collapse of the medical system ended within the first 3 months. So suppose that's true, 3/4ths of the lockdown and all the mental health and depression related deaths associated with it were unnecessary. I don't know when the lockdowns stopped being effective in protecting the medical system, but I know it wasn't this morning. Some amount of those deaths are attributed to lockdowns that were unnecessary. Also, you can't quantify the hypothetical death toll in that scenario in any real numbers, to say "would have skyrocketed" is unfounded. I could understand "would've been higher" that sounds reasonable.

maerF0x0 5y ago

> Something to consider if you see anyone trying to downplay this. I admit I'm the morbid one in the group, memento mori and all. But I think the real stat we should track is years of lost life expectancy. That's the only statistic that makes sense when doing cross disease examinations. Not speaking specifically about covid, but more generally, something which primarily kills young people is much bigger deal than something which primarily kills old people.

exporectomy 5y ago
I wonder if that measure should be used for criminal justice as well. As well as showing that killing an old person is less harmful, it also excludes babies. Both these groups seem to have lives that are worth less even to themselves and so it's (however distasteful) not as bad if they die. We already do that with abortion by valuing an unborn baby's life less.
- username90 5y ago
  Many places already has laws around infanticide which is much lower than manslaughter. Canada for example sentences mothers to at most 5 years with no minimum for killing their baby.
jschwartzi 5y ago
YLL is a horrifying metric because it values someone who is 20 over someone who is 60. The only argument I can see for its "usefulness" as a statistic is if you want to imply that the old are less useful than the young. This kind of statement about the bare utility of a human life is the same statement that underlies a lot of how we have treated the disabled or those on welfare in the past. And it only makes sense if you think about a human life in terms of its economic usefulness as some sort of cog in the economic machine that wears out and can be discarded safely after age 67.
- orangecat 5y ago
  The only argument I can see for its "usefulness" as a statistic is if you want to imply that the old are less useful than the young. It's not about "usefulness", it's that saving the life of a young person produces a larger benefit in terms of expected future years of life. Take the extreme case: if a building is on fire and you can only rescue one person, would you be indifferent between saving the life of a 10 year old child versus a 90 year old with terminal cancer?

jollybean 5y ago

It's also greater than all of US military combat deaths for every war combined i.e. Civil War, WW1/2, Korea, Vietnam etc.. And think of how much concern (legitimately so) we have for them.

nonameiguess 5y ago
US Civil War death toll is estimated between 620,000 and 750,000, which is higher than the official Covid toll so far. It was also much more highly concentrated in a small number of states in a country that was far less populated.
- jollybean 5y ago
  That's not 'combat deaths' though, that's 'total deaths'. In those wars, a huge number of people died from things other than direct combat. Here are the numbers [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualt...