How Does COVID-19 Compare to the Spanish Flu?
Story at-a-glance
- While COVID-19 meets the technical definition of a pandemic, the death toll is nowhere near that of earlier serious pandemics that would legitimately justify the extraordinary measures being deployed by the U.S. government
- An estimated 75 million to 200 million people in Eurasia and as much as 60% of the European population in rural areas were wiped out by the Black Death (bubonic plague) between 1347 and 1351
- The Spanish flu (swine flu), which hit during World War I in 1918, infected 500 million people worldwide, killing an estimated 50 million, or 2.7% of the global population
- Using the higher of two prominent COVID-19 trackers, 238,950 people had died, globally, from COVID-19 as of the afternoon on May 2, 2020. Based on a global population of 7.8 billion, 238,950 deaths amount to 0.003% of the global population
- Mid-March predictions said COVID-19 would kill 2.2 million Americans if allowed to run its course. April 8, 2020, the Murray Model downgraded the threat to 60,000 dead by August, which is lower than the death toll for the seasonal flu of 2017/2018
While COVID-19 meets the technical definition1 of a pandemic (i.e., “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people”), the death toll is nowhere near that of earlier serious pandemics2 that would legitimately justify the extraordinary measures being deployed by the U.S. government and others around the globe.
The Black Death
For comparison, the “Black Death,” which swept through Europe between 1347 and 1351 and kept resurfacing at intervals for the next 300 years, decimated up to one-third of the population with each recurrence.3,4
While the Black Death was long thought to be the same as the bubonic plague, in more recent years, researchers have questioned this assumption,5 and at least some of the evidence suggests they were not the same disease.
Either way, the plague killed 75 million to 200 million people in Eurasia, with deaths peaking in Europe from 1347 to 1351.6 As much as 60% of the European population in rural areas were wiped out by the Black Death in the first four-year-long pandemic wave. People died within days of having symptoms.7 This horrific lethality is typically what people think of when they hear the word “pandemic.”
The Spanish Flu
Similarly, the Spanish flu (aka, swine flu), which hit during World War I in 1918, infected 500 million people worldwide, killing an estimated 50 million, or 2.7% of the global population.8
It killed 675,000 in the U.S. alone — more than died in combat during World War I, World War II, the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined, according to the historical documentary above.
Like the bubonic plague, the Spanish flu was a very rapid killer, causing death in as little as 12 hours. Like the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the virus also spread very easily and rapidly. Unlike COVID-19, however, people between the ages of 20 and 40 were most susceptible to the infection.
With COVID-19, it’s the elderly and immune compromised that are at greatest risk, but even in these high-risk groups, the mortality rate is nowhere near that of the Spanish flu.
COVID-19
Data points vary, and mortality statistics differ widely depending on the country and area you’re looking at, but using the higher of two prominent COVID-19 trackers — Worldometer,9 opposed to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center10 — 238,950 people had died, globally, from COVID-19 as of the afternoon on May 2, 2020.
Based on a global population of 7.8 billion,11 238,950 deaths amount to 0.003% of the global population. Even if this tally is off by hundreds of thousands, we’re still only looking at a fraction of a percent of the global population succumbing to COVID-19 in three and a half months.
April 15, there were also 1,403,420 active cases, 96% of which were mild and only 4% of which were serious or critical,12 so clearly, a vast majority of people who are infected make it through and end up having antibodies that will confer long-term immunity.
I for one could see shutting down the global economy for a true plague or something much like the Spanish flu, but COVID-19 simply doesn’t warrant the draconian elimination of personal freedom and liberty we’re currently seeing. Nor is it serious enough to warrant the kinds of long-term surveillance strategies suggested by Bill Gates
Understand What’s Happening Right Now
The Corbett Report above is well worth listening to if you’re still on the fence and think the way we’re going is a good idea to safeguard the vulnerable. Remember, infectious diseases have been with us since the dawn of mankind, and are not going to stop. Ever.
Right now, we’re being told that we have to forgo our civil liberties because we might spread a virus to a potentially vulnerable individual, and if that happens, we’re culpable in their death. So, to prevent “mass homicide” from occurring by people moving about freely, we’re told we have to isolate ourselves and stop living.
Yet every single flu season throughout history, people have moved about, spreading the infection around. Undoubtedly, most people who have ever left their house with a cold, stomach bug or other influenza at any point in the past has unwittingly spread the infection to others, some of which may have ended up with a serious case of illness and some of which may ultimately have died from it.
There is simply no way to prevent such a chain of events in perpetuity. Giving up our civil liberties in an effort to prevent all future deaths from infectious disease is profoundly misguided, and ultimately will not work anyway.
From my perspective, the only mitigating factor in this analysis is that there appears to be solid, well-documented evidence that this is an engineered virus, one that was constructed in biosafety level 3 and 4 labs that are focused on offensive biological weapons research. This may result in unprecedented adverse biological adaptions that impair innate immunity. But at this time, I seriously doubt it.
Mortality Predictions Fall Apart
Mid-March predictions said COVID-19 would kill 2.2 million Americans if allowed to run its course.13 By the end of March, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, downgraded the projected death toll, saying we were probably looking at 100,000 to 240,000 Americans dying.14
April 8, 2020, a new model referred to as the Murray Model15 downgraded the threat further, predicting COVID-19 will kill 60,000 in the U.S. by August16 — a number that is still 20,000 lower than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s death toll numbers attributed to the seasonal flu the winter of 2017/2018.17
In the Liberty Report video above, Dr. Ron Paul, former GOP congressman, also points out that Fauci’s “doom and gloom predictions” have completely collapsed, “with the new official prediction coming in under the normal flu numbers for 2018.”
If COVID-19 is not causing any greater death toll than the regular flu season two years ago, why are we now asked to end society as we know it well into the foreseeable future? There’s no doubt in my mind that there will be far more deaths attributable to the financial collapse and isolation than there will be from the actual infection.
H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic Response Was a Gift to Big Pharma
The H1N1 swine flu of 2009 was the most recent pandemic of note, and considering Fauci and Gates are both saying we won’t be able (read, allowed) to go back to any semblance of normalcy until or unless we have a vaccine and enforce mandatory vaccination of the global population, it’s worth remembering what happened during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
The CDC estimates that from April 12, 2009, to April 10, 2010, there were 60.8 million cases of H1N1 infection, 274,000 hospitalizations, and 12,469 deaths (0.02% infection fatality rate/mortality rate) in the United States.
June 11, 2009, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic of novel influenza A (H1N1).18 A vaccine was rapidly unveiled, and within months, cases of disability and death from the H1N1 vaccine were reported in various parts of the world.
In the aftermath, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) questioned the WHO’s handling of the pandemic. In June 2010, PACE concluded “the handling of the pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), EU health agencies and national governments led to a ‘waste of large sums of public money, and unjustified scares and fears about the health risks faced by the European public.’”19
Specifically, PACE concluded there was “overwhelming evidence that the seriousness of the pandemic was vastly overrated by WHO,” and that the drug industry had influenced the organization’s decision-making.20 As reported by the Natural Society in 2014:21
“… a joint investigation by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) has uncovered some serious conflicts of interest between the World Health Organization (WHO), who proposed … heavy vaccinations, and the pharmaceutical companies which created them.
The joint-investigation’s report explains that the WHO profited immensely22 from the scare tactics they utilized to promote the use of a swine flu vaccine.
Creating mass hysteria was the WHO’s emergency advisory committee’s goal … The WHO told the world that up to 7 million people could die without the vaccines they were pushing … The advisory panel was choked with individuals highly connected to the pharmaceutical companies with vested interests in both antiviral and influenza vaccines.
An over $4 billion stake was invested in developing these vaccines, and without a pandemic there would be no use for them. Utilizing propaganda and fear, the drugs were pushed on unsuspecting people, and the money was made.”
Disturbingly, while the WHO was found to have had serious conflicts of interest with the drug industry, nothing has actually changed since then, which makes one wonder whether the WHO’s COVID-19 pandemic response can actually be trusted.
White House Halts Funding to WHO
To Read the rest of the article and get links that may not have been included, go to: https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/05/02/how-does-covid-19-compare-to-the-spanish-flu.aspx
