Despite all the scientific and medical advances of the past 103 years, the Covid-19 pandemic has now killed more Americans than the 1918 flu pandemic did.
More than 675,000 people in the United States have died from Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University. That surpasses the estimated US death toll from the deadliest pandemic of the 20th century.
“If you would have talked to me in 2019, I would have said I’d be surprised,” said epidemiologist Stephen Kissler of the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health.
“But if you talked to me in probably April or May 2020, I would say I would not be surprised we’d hit this point.”
In April 2020, CNN published a list of lessons learned from the 1918 pandemic that could help mitigate the Covid-19 pandemic.
They included not ditching safety precautions too early; not getting a false sense of security among those young and healthy; and not relying on unproven treatments.
But Kissler said those lessons were not heeded by many.
“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.”
CNN
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