The number of deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic in the US will surpass the 1918 influenza pandemic as early as Monday. Many experts say that after the vaccine was successfully developed, this situation could have been avoided.

According to Johns Hopkins University, since the outbreak of the pandemic, the number of deaths reported in the US has reached 673,768, while the number of deaths due to the influenza pandemic a century ago is estimated at 675,000. Over the past week, the average number of people infected and killed in the US per day was 1,970.

The number of deaths from the influenza pandemic, which is about to surpass that of a hundred years ago, occurred in a context where the Covid-19 vaccine was already widely available. The vaccine was successfully developed at a record pace, demonstrating extraordinary advances in medical science over the past century. However, about 70 million eligible Americans have rejected the vaccine, and many of them have been encouraged by Republican politicians and conservative media to make this choice.

“It's painful that so many people died with modern medicine,” said Eric Topol of the Scripps Translational Research Institute, who pointed out that there were no ventilators or vaccines in 1918. “The numbers we're seeing aren't at all what America should have seen.”

This development is also taking place against the backdrop of the rapid spread of the mutated Delta strain and driving the US epidemic into a dangerous new phase. The Delta strain upended hopes that the pandemic had passed and brought great uncertainty to the coming winter.

Of course, the comparison with 1918 isn't entirely appropriate. First, the number of residents in the US is roughly three times what it was a century ago, which means the implied death rate is about one-third of what it was then.

John Barry, author of “The Pandemic: The Deadliest Pandemic in History,” pointed out that many of the people who died in the 1918 influenza pandemic were young people, but so far most of the COVID-19 deaths have been patients aged 65 and over, and the pace of the two pandemics was very different. He said that the damage caused by the 1918 epidemic was mainly concentrated in the second half of that year, which continued for 14-15 weeks.

“It's much more intense and far more scary,” Barry said of the 1918 influenza pandemic. He said the pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic has continued for a longer period of time, and “economic losses have exceeded a few light years (from the pandemic).”