COVID-19 has now killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic did — approximately 675,000. The 1918-19 influenza numbers are rough guesses. The population of the U.S. at the time was about one-third the size of what it is today.
The ebbing of COVID-19 could happen if the virus progressively weakens as it mutates and more and more humans’ immune systems learn to attack it. Vaccination and surviving infection are the main ways the immune system improves. Breast-fed infants also gain some immunity from their mothers.
“We will all get infected,” Antia predicted. “What’s important is whether the infections are severe.”Something similar happened with the H1N1 flu virus, the culprit in the 1918-19 pandemic. It encountered too many people who were immune, and it also eventually weakened through mutation. H1N1 still circulates today, but human immunity acquired from infection and vaccination has triumphed.
In many ways, the 1918-19 flu — which was wrongly named Spanish flu because it first received widespread news coverage in Spain — was worse. Medical historian Dr. Howard Markel of the University of Michigan said he is continually astounded by the magnitude of the disruption the pandemic has brought to the planet.
Just under 64% of the U.S. population has received as least one dose of the vaccine, with state rates ranging from a high of approximately 77% in Vermont and Massachusetts and lows around 46% to 49% in Idaho, Wyoming, West Virginia and Mississippi.has received at least one dose, according to Our World in Data, with some African countries just beginning to give their first shots.
The current vaccines work extremely well in preventing severe disease and death from the variants of the virus that have emerged so far.
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