Current Events > Which will cause more US deaths WW2 or COVID19?

(+) Yeah! (+)

What do you expect?

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COVID already surpassed that

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from what i just googled, covid has already surpassed ww2 in us deaths

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https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/03/962811921/the-u-s-battles-coronavirus-but-is-it-fair-to-compare-pandemic-to-a-war

Irony posted...

COVID already surpassed that

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Still the champion:

Didn't 210 thousand die in ww2

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ImAMarvel posted...

Civil War had the most US deaths, TC

iirc

Yes but COVID is catching up fast

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What will have the most deaths, Spanish Flu or Covid-19?

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Why are you comparing this to wars and not other pandemics in history?

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Smackems posted...

Didn't 210 thousand die in ww2

405,399 Americans, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Monolith1676 posted...

What will have the most deaths, Spanish Flu or Covid-19?

Meanwhile, around 1350...

The spanish flu killed 40+ million in just a year? Only shit!!!

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ImAMarvel posted...

This picture is old, right?

I think this one is from last June or so, yeah.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Meanwhile, around 1350...

Covid-19 is terrible but like it shows here, in the grand scheme of things it is nothing.

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Prismsblade posted...

The spanish flu killed 40+ million in just a year? Only shit!!!

@Prismsblade It also targeted young and healthy people too.

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Monolith1676 posted...

@Prismsblade It also targeted young and healthy people too.

Damn. It was like covids Chad older brother in a evil, twisted sorta way.

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ImAMarvel posted...

Read above. This pic is from June. Covid is worse than most of the smaller pandemics on there.

We're probably getting into the realm of 17th-Century Great Plagues by now, but still unlikely to make into the top row.

ImAMarvel posted...

Read above. This pic is from June. Covid is worse than most of the smaller pandemics on there.

Not at all if you take world populations during those time periods into consideration.

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Monolith1676 posted...

Covid-19 is terrible but like it shows here, it the grand scheme of things it is nothing.

To an extent, that's because of when the outbreak occurred. In earlier centuries, with little or nothing to check its spread or to treat those infected by it, it may have racked up a far higher death toll.

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ImAMarvel posted...

ehh, not the worst point.

Death total wise we are just below the 17th century point. If you factor end the total people that died and the world population it would rank near the bottom. It seems so much worse because we are living through it.

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ImAMarvel posted...

It'll probably wind up around 4-5 mil deaths by the end of it. Assuming the new strains aren't affected by the vaccine(s).

Why would you assume that? So far most research indidcates the vaccines will likely provide decent protection despite decreased antibody response.

The only American war Covid hasn't surpassed is the Civil War

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"Only one of the top 10 deadliest pandemics of all time, not counting the additional millions that were harmed but survived. No big deal. At least it isn't anywhere near as bad as the Black Death!"

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Prismsblade posted...

Why are you comparing this to wars and not other pandemics in history?

Wondering that too

hockeybub89 posted...

"Only one of the top 10 deadliest pandemics of all time, not counting the additional millions that were harmed but survived. No big deal. At least it isn't anywhere near as bad as the Black Death!"

Well, it's not.
It's not even as bad as cheeseburgers. https://usafacts.org/articles/top-causes-death-united-states-heart-disease-cancer-and-covid-19/

Questionmarktarius posted...

It's not even as bad as cheeseburgers.

Trouble is when you post something like that, it trivializes a crisis; and it persuades some people to think along the lines of, "Well, maybe we shouldn't be making such a fuss about this."

Let's put it this way. If cheeseburgers manage to kill four times as many Americans in a single day than the 9/11 hijackers did, then by comparison having a terrorist attack against a major US city on the scale of the World Trade Center once a week, every week of the year would be no big deal for America. So why worry? Why bother spending even an extra cent on trying to defend the US from terrorism?

Yet the simple statistics on terrorism (or other violent crime) versus the killer cheeseburger don't make Americans feel any safer from the former, or make them think it's no big deal. Why is that?

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Firewerx posted...

Trouble is when you post something like that, it trivializes a crisis; and it persuades some people to think along the lines of, "Well, maybe we shouldn't be making such a fuss about this."

Maybe it's time to start making a fuss about cheeseburgers?

If cheeseburgers manage to kill four times as many Americans in a single day than the 9/11 hijackers did

Looks like just about half as many get dead from cheeseburgers every day.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Looks like just about half as many get dead from cheeseburgers every day.

Point taken. To judge from the site you linked to, that's roughly 14,000 a week. (Seems a little unfair to blame all heart disease on cheeseburgers, but until there are reliable stats to break down cause of death by foodstuff...) So if America was hit by two terrorist attacks on the scale of 9/11 every week, someone could point out that it's less than half the fatalities caused by the lethal cheeseburger.

The question is, if America was being constantly hit by a wave of heavy, relentless terrorist attacks, who the fuck would find any kind of comfort in that statistic? Or argue that the danger of terrorism threat was being blown out of all proportion? What would the reaction have been if Bush had faced the cameras hours after collapse of the Twin Towers and reassured the American public that to put the day's events into perspective, their deadliest enemy remained the Big Mac rather than Al-Qaeda?

And with Covid-19 killing even more Americans than two 9/11 attacks every week, why would anyone seek to downplay the seriousness of that?

Seems to me that if over 675,000 Americans are already dying every year from heart disease, no one needs yet another cause of death catching up that death toll by halfway and piling yet more corpses onto the body count. You don't think there's enough fuss made about cheesburgers? Then that's an argument for making more fuss about cheeseburgers, not for making less fuss about Covid-19.

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Firewerx posted...

(Seems a little unfair to blame all heart disease on cheeseburgers, but until there are reliable stats to break down cause of death by foodstuff...)

Well... bacon cheeseburgers.

Questionmarktarius posted...

Well... bacon cheeseburgers.

I think it'll be a few years before forensic science can write that on a death certificate, though. Until then: "All we can say at this stage of our investigation is, we believe it was most likely something from the breakfast menu."

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Total worldwide deaths in WW2 was 75-85 million.

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spikethedevil posted...

Total worldwide deaths in WW2 was 75-85 million.

He did ask "which will cause more US deaths", though.

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True but I was just putting the entire thing into some kind of perspective.

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Firewerx posted...

Until then: "All we can say at this stage of our investigation is, we believe it was most likely something from the breakfast menu."

Extra value cigarettes hasn't been on the menu since the late 80s, I think.

lots more young people dying in WW2 I think, lives aren't all equal, someone 85 yrs old dying isn't the same as someone 25 yrs old dying

To be fair I'm not sure people would even have noticed covid back in the 1940s given how low life expectencies were in general and the state of the world at the time.

To put things in perspective about 20 active and reserve US military members have died of covid so WW2 killed about 20,000 times as many us troops.

Atralis posted...

To be fair I'm not sure people would even have noticed covid back in the 1940s given how low life expectencies were in general and the state of the world at the time.

What was the mean life expectancy for Americans in, say, 1947 then? (Bearing in mind that infant mortality rates can skew life expectancy stats. To get a more accurate picture, ideally you'd want to be able to say what life expectancy was for Americans who made it to the age of, say, 5.)

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Covid-19 was blown out of proportion imo due to social media mostly, the real pandemic were the social medias, without it it would only have felt like a pretty bad flu season with very old people getting hit the hardest naturally

Firewerx posted...

What was the mean life expectancy for Americans in, say, 1947 then?

About 65 which was about as high as Afghanistan or the congo is today. Medicine has come a very long way since then.

ROOTFayth posted...

Covid-19 was blown out of proportion imo due to social media mostly, the real pandemic were the social medias, without it it would only have felt like a pretty bad flu season

The third biggest killer of Americans, racking up a body count equivalent to a quarter of all deaths from heart disease and cancer combined, doesn't strike me as having been "blown out of proportion". And it's hardly a "season"; this fucker is here to stay and to keep on killing until robust action is taken to stop the spread.

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Atralis posted...

About 65 which was about as high as Afghanistan or the congo is today. Medicine has come a very long way since then.

If people were dying at the age of 65 (on average), it sounds as if people were more vulnerable to chronic or severe ill health at a younger age; so, wouldn't that mean that Covid-19 would have taken them out at a younger age? And indeed, as you imply, sufferers in 2021 stand a higher chance of survival due to modern treatments -- treatments unavailable to Americans in the 1940s. So I'd say it's quite possible that Covid-19 would have been seen as an even bigger killer in the 1940s, rather than go unnoticed.

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Firewerx posted...

If people were dying at the age of 65 (on average), it sounds as if people were more vulnerable to chronic or severe ill health at a younger age; which surely would mean that Covid-19 would take them out at a younger age, too? And as you rightly say, sufferers in 2021 stand a higher chance of survival due to modern treatments -- treatments unavailable to Americans in the 1940s. So I'd say it's quite possible that Covid-19 would have been seen as an even bigger killer in the 1940s, rather than go unnoticed.

I have doubts. In that era "natural causes" includes a lot of things that it doesn't today and the ability to test for diseases was practically non existent. If you were physically vulnerable for genetic reasons something was going to take you out regardless and death in your 60s and up was seen as natural.

I'll also reiterate that the US had 20,000 times as many troops die in ww2 as we have had troops die to covid. That isnt a totally fair comparison but the reason is that young people can fight the disease off fairly effectively.

The pandemic in 1918 was remembered because it killed the young as well as old.

Firewerx posted...

The third biggest killer of Americans, racking up a body count equivalent to a quarter of all deaths from heart disease and cancer combined, doesn't strike me as having been "blown out of proportion". And it's hardly a "season"; this fucker is here to stay and to keep on killing until robust action is taken to stop the spread.

the fact it didn't surpass heart disease and cancer after a whole year of the USA completely mismanaging it quite telling though, of course it's a bad virus, it's just not nearly as bad as scientists initially predicted