Tag: Spanish flu

The Spanish flu: The global impact of the largest influenza pandemic in history

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://ourworldindata.org/spanish-flu-largest-influenza-pandemic-in-history

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Estimates suggest that the world population in 1918 was 1.8 billion.

Based on this, the low estimate of 17.4 million deaths by Spreeuwenberg et al. (2018) implies that the Spanish flu killed almost 1% of the world population.9

The estimate of 50 million deaths published by Johnson and Mueller implies that the Spanish flu killed 2.7% of the world population. And if it was in fact higher – 100 million as these authors suggest – then the global death rate would have been 5.4%.10

The world population was growing by around 13 million every year in this period which suggests that the period of the Spanish flu was likely the last time in history when the world population was declining.11

Author(s): Max Roser

Publication Date: 4 Mar 202

Publication Site: Our World in Data

The pandemic’s reported death toll will soon reach 1 million people in the United States.

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2022/how-many-people-died-covid-united-states-1-million-graphic/

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The pandemic’s death toll in the United States will surpass 1 million people in the coming days. Conveying the meaning or the magnitude of this number is impossible. But 1 million deaths is the benchmark of an unprecedented American tragedy.

Consider this comparison: The population of D.C. is about 670,000 people. Try to imagine life without every person, in every building, on every street, in the nation’s capital. And then imagine another 330,000 people are gone.

To attempt to put the 1 million deaths in context, we plotted its damage over more than two years and compared the continuing death toll with the tolls from previous catastrophes in our history.

Author(s): Sergio Peçanha and Yan Wu

Publication Date: 12 May 2022

Publication Site: Washington Post