Do Flu Deaths Ever Top 100,000?

President Trump compares flu and COVID deaths in a tweet.

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After spending the weekend at Walter Reed Medical Center being treated for COVID-19, President Trump returned to the White House Monday evening. On Tuesday morning, he sent a tweet comparing influenza to coronavirus:

Flu deaths rarely even come close to that 100,000 figure. The CDC estimates that there were 22,000 deaths in the  2019-2020 flu season. The highest number of flu-related deaths since 2010, per the CDC, was in 2017-2018, with an estimated 61,000 deaths. 

In fact, the only years since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 in which the U.S. flu death toll is known to have topped 100,000 were 1957 and 1968, when there were worldwide pandemics due to novel influenza viruses. The CDC has been tracking flu deaths for more than four decades.

By contrast, there have been a reported 210,155 COVID-19 related deaths in the U.S., according to Johns Hopkins COVID-19 dashboard, with 345 new coronavirus deaths reported Monday alone. 

Although the number of COVID-19 cases has decreased nationally since late July, case numbers continue to climb in much of the country, despite social distancing measures. According to the New York Times, an average of 720 Americans have died each day in October. North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, and Tennessee, among other states, are reporting the highest growth in new deaths in the last two weeks. 

Trump’s post was removed by Facebook earlier today for violating platform guidelines. Twitter left the tweet up but added a public interest notice stating that it’s in violation of the site’s policy on sharing misleading information on COVID-19. 

It is true that “many” people die from the flu each year, but it is misleading to suggest that the death toll regularly tops 100,000.

Khaya Himmelman is a fact checker for The Dispatch.

If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Kaitlin Johnson

    Another Dispatch fact checker! Welcome and thanks for all your work!!

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    1. David D

      I've gotta imagine the job req is just a single sentence: "are you unable to let someone be wrong on the internet?"

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    Mike B

    Much as I hate to say it, the claims that the flu death toll has been over 100,000 "sometimes" and that many people die of flu each year are technically true even though the implied message that Covid is comparable to seasonal flu is absurd. The claim that Covid is less lethal than flu in "most populations" is false.

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      Justin Perry-Naw Dawg Doctrine

      I know you aren't intending to make a false claim or anything, I'm just curious what you mean by the statement that it kills over 100,000 people. Internationally? Then sure, that is an accurate assessment. But in the USA? Even in pandemic years of the Flu (most recently, H1N1 in 2009, which I got, and it f'ing sucked) we didn't reach that level.

      So the CDC statistics since 2010 are pretty easily accessible online, but the stats before then are a bit more obscure. Fortunately, your trusty PubMed has the article open access! Thanks NIH!

      I would highlight two things. Figure 3 gives you the "total number of deaths" (estimated, of course) up until 2004. I was able to find the stats for 2004 onward on the CDC website. Hauntingly, if I were to only look at this figure, I would think the deaths are dramatically going up!

      But then look at Table 1 and Figure 2. The deaths per 100,000 have plummeted since 1918. Since, arguably, the 1940s the deaths per 100k people is extremely low. While it isn't entirely clear what the final deaths per 100k will be (still waiting for the denominator), the current rate is likely going to fall somewhere between 10- to 100-fold higher than our worst flu season in decades. It's pretty clear math. Most years Flu infections ~30 million on average, and is killing (estimated) 20k-60k. Covid has infected ~8 million thus far, and has killed over 215k. Again, waiting on denominator, but it seems like the number we are getting now is scaling linearly (eg the deaths due to covid are scaling linear to the newly formed cases) so the deaths per 100k isn't changing much.

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2374803/

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        Mike B

        What I meant was that over 100K deaths in the US in a flu season has happened twice, in 1957 and 1968, according to the fact check - so "sometimes" is technically not a lie even though the intent of the Tweet is clearly to equate the flu and Covid, which IS a lie.

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          Kent Mansfield

          Both 1957 were 1968 were pandemic years. These were noval viruses. It would not be appropriate to say they were seasonal flu deaths.

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            Mike B

            That's a great point! I stand corrected. So now the only truthful part of his Tweet was "flu season is coming".

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          Tom B.

          It's certainly a misuse of the word "sometimes" at the least.
          ---
          "Sometimes, I like to lift weights," Jim said, puffing out his chest vainly and trying to impress the young lady.

          "Don't lie, Jim," his friend replied. "You've gone to the gym at once in the past five years!"
          ---
          Now if Jim had said, "I hardly ever lift weights," that would have been more accurate.

          It's true that "sometimes" is indefinite in terms of how frequently something happened. But it's not proper usage to use it for rare events.

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          Mike B

          Flu deaths in the US have averaged approximately 35,900 annually since 2010-2011, so Covid fatalities so far are 6 times the typical flu season and may be much higher by year's end.

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    David Chen

    It's like he thinks COVID is 'The Force' or something - and one must experience it to master it. So in addition to teaching him absolutely nothing, he is back on the air telling people to not be afraid since surely they must also have 4-5 doctors and a helicopter to fly to the ER. If this idiot living was the better outcome for the nation, how fked are we?!

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    Butch Earl

    "People have a callous way of talking about a born liar just as they talk about a born poet, but in both cases they are wrong. Lying and poetry are arts. They require the most careful study, the most disinterested devotion." ~ Oscar Wilde

    Khaya Himmelman, welcome to The Dispatch fact checking staff! I do not envy your duties as our current President is he is an expert practitioner at his favorite art!

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      Philbnichols

      Nice quote from Wilde, but I think lying is only sometimes an art requiring 'the most careful study', etc. Expert liars, who are not often caught, fit this description. But the ones we catch many times and yet continue doing it, that doesn't reflect 'the most careful study', but rather a compulsion that reveals a simple moral shortcoming. And Trump has a confluence of moral failings, all of which I can't identify.

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  10. Jess

    I want to apologize to so many Americans every time our president minimizes the pandemic. I’m sorry to everyone who lost a friend, relative, colleague or mentor. They didn’t die because they were weak. They died because they got a virus that evolved in bats. On a microscopic level, far beyond their control, their immune system couldn’t beat something it wasn’t designed to fight. Maybe they died in part because they got the virus during the chaotic early months, or maybe they didn’t have access to healthcare, let alone the very latest treatments and 24/7 individual attention.

    If your fellow Americans met you, and heard your story, even if they were your opposite politically, I still believe they would reach out in compassion. They would mourn with you.

    I also want to apologize to all the healthcare workers in hospitals and nursing homes, especially in NYC because that’s what I’m familiar with. The reasonable people in this country know this virus is dangerous. We know how hard you tried and how scary and sad it was. We are heartbroken about what you went through and we don’t want it to happen again.

    If they met you, your fellow Americans (even if they were on the other side of this political divide), would understand your exhaustion and worry. They would thank you for your service. I don’t want Trump to diminish our unity in grief and gratitude.

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      Emily

      Thank you! Beautifully said!

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      Mike B

      Well said.

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