Back in April, the media outlets noted that American deaths from COVID-19 had surpassed the number of American deaths in the Vietnam War (58,220). Given that it’s Memorial Day, I decided to crunch some more numbers along those lines. I’ve included the numbers I’m using so people can check my math.
In World War I, the US lost 116,516 military personnel during our relatively short involvement in the conflict (565 days). More than half of those were due to deaths from the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic.
Average deaths per day: 206.2
Many more Americans died in World War II than in WWI, with 405,399 deaths from both combat and non-combat causes. America was at war from December 7, 1941 through August 14, 1945 (1346 days).
Average deaths per day: 301.2
The deadliest conflict in American history is the Civil War, which lasted from April 12, 1861 through April 9, 1865 (1458 days). For 110 years the official combined Union/Confederacy death toll was 618,222. In 2012, scholars revised that figure to 750,000, maybe as high as 850,000. I split the difference and called it 800,000.
Average deaths per day: 548.7
If you take the deaths from all three conflicts and average them out over the length of the longest conflict (the Civil War), you get how many deaths you’d see if all three wars occurred simultaneously.
Average deaths per day over 1458 days: 906.7
The first death from coronavirus in the US was recorded February 4, 2020. Today is May 25, 2020, which makes it 109 days from that first death. As of today, the death toll from the virus is 99,459.
Average deaths per day: 912.5
So, that’s what coronavirus is doing to the United States right now. People are dying from COVID-19 at a greater rate than if we were fighting the Civil War, World War I, and World War II at the same time.