- Dr. Fauci recently cautioned that the coronavirus could rival the Spanish Flu if people continue to disregard basic safety measures like social distancing and mask-wearing.
- The Spanish Flu killed an estimated 50 million people in the early 1900s.
- The number of new coronavirus cases is increasing rapidly all across the United States.
Dr. Anthony Fauci recently said that the coronavirus has the potential to rival the devastation caused by the Spanish Flu, a pandemic that killed tens of millions of people in the early 1900s.
“If you look at the magnitude of the 1918 pandemic where anywhere from 50 to 75 to 100 million people globally died,” Fauci said earlier this week, “that was the mother of all pandemics and truly historic. I hope we don’t even approach that with [COVID-19] but it does have the makings of, the possibility of approaching that in seriousness.”
Fauci further explained:
This is a pandemic of historic proportions. I think we can’t deny that fact. It’s something I think that when history looks back on it, it will be comparable to what we saw in 1918.
…
That was influenza, this is coronavirus, that essentially thrust itself onto the human population. It had two characteristics that are the thing that make it, as I say, ‘the perfect storm.’ And that is a virus that jumps species, but that almost immediately has an extraordinarily, capable and efficient way of spreading from human to human. Simultaneously with having a considerable degree of morbidity and mortality.
Though some might try and quickly dismiss Fauci’s remarks as fear-mongering, the current state of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States suggests that Fauci’s dire warning is well-founded.
The grim reality is that the number of new coronavirus cases is currently surging across a number of U.S. states. And in some areas, the rate of new coronavirus cases isn’t just increasing, it’s accelerating. Over the weekend, for example, Florida reported nearly 15,300 new coronavirus cases. To put that figure into context, that’s more new cases in a single day than any other state has reported since the pandemic began a few months ago.
Recently, some have tried to downplay the severity of the surging coronavirus cases by arguing that the death rate wasn’t rising alongside it. And while that seemed to be the case for a period of time, states like Florida are now seeing an uptick in coronavirus-related deaths. This week, for example, Florida reported 156 coronavirus deaths within a 24-hour period, a figure which eclipsed the previous high of 132 deaths.
Meanwhile, Florida’s neighbor to the north — Georgia — is seemingly moving backward in its own fight against COVID-19. Earlier this week, Georgia governor Brian Kemp banned cities from requiring citizens to wear masks in public places. Instead, Kemp said that masks are “strongly encouraged” but shouldn’t be mandated. Georgia, meanwhile, has seen a huge increase in new coronavirus cases over the past few weeks.
A shred of promising news, amid all the bad, is that early trials of a coronavirus vaccine from Moderna have been extremely promising.
