The COVID-19 pandemic has now killed roughly the same amount of people who died from the 1918 Spanish flu.
According to Johns Hopkins, more than 675,000 Americans have died from COVID-19.
The Centers for Disease Control says the Spanish flu killed “about 675,000” people in the U.S.
With COVID-19 still surging in the U.S., it’s expected the death toll will only climb.
Prior to COVID-19, the CDC said the 1918 influenza pandemic was the “most severe pandemic in recent history.”
Ending the COVID-19 pandemic means different things to different people. Most medical experts believe COVID-19 will stick around, but it will be less severe.
“We hope it will be like getting a cold, but there’s no guarantee,” Emory University biologist Rustom Antia told The Associated Press.
A similar scenario ended the Spanish flu pandemic. The H1N1 flu virus still circulates today, but there are vaccines and natural immunity that have made it less severe.