The coronavirus pandemic has been compared to the influenza pandemic of 1918 commonly referred to as the "Spanish Flu," but future generations may compare their own pandemics to our current one in the same manner.
At some point today, the American death toll from COVID-19 will surpass the death toll of our previous pandemic even though we have all the benefits of modern medicine and technology.
The U.S. has reported 673,768 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins University data -- just shy of the 675,000 that are estimated to have died a century earlier. The toll has increased by an average of 1,970 a day over the past week.
“To have so many people who have died with modern medicine is distressing,” said Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Research Institute, who noted there were no ventilators or vaccines in 1918. “The number we are at represents a number that is far worse than it should be in the U.S.”
It's possible and maybe even likely that estimates have low-balled the actual death toll of our first pandemic which happened a century ago, but that is also true of COVID-19.
Moreover, the coronavirus pandemic isn't over. University researchers have estimated that an additional 100,000 Americans would be killed by COVID by December. It's hard not to look toward the future and see that our death toll could approach a million at some point in 2022 if so many Americans continue to refuse vaccination.
None of this had to happen. Our death toll is still disproportionately higher than the rest of the world and our vaccination rate is lower. We have the most widespread and easy access to vaccines in the world, and yet we can't get almost 100 million Americans to take one.
The Trump regime planted the seeds of whatever our final death toll will eventually be. Trump could have urged his supporters to place their faith in science, but he literally told them to drink bleach. I imagine the children of 2100 will collectively shake their heads and laugh in disbelief that that actually happened.