The Covid-19 pandemic is unequivocally the largest mass casualty event in U.S. history.
That fact gained more credence when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that the U.S. recently surpassed 1 million deaths attributed to the disease on death certificates.
Covid-19 has snatched more American lives than World Wars I and II combined. The death toll also exceeds the individual populations of U.S. cities such as Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Charlotte, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, and Boston.
What’s more, about 43% and 33% more people have died from Covid-19 than those from the HIV/AIDS epidemic and Civil War, respectively.
We tried to find another event comparable to the pandemic in terms of sheer loss of life. Slavery in America and the aftereffects of Jim Crow could qualify, but no reliable death toll estimate of those events exist.
With reports of a possible fall and winter Covid-19 resurgence on the horizon, there could be grimmer milestones to come in the not-too-distant future.
Here’s what 1 million U.S. Covid deaths mean compared to other great tragedies our nation has faced:
