this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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Like would a Spanish flu level pandemic do it? How many bodies gotta drop before they're scared into masking

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[โ€“] wopazoo@hexbear.net 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Like would a Spanish flu level pandemic do it?

Just looking at the Wikipedia pages for each pandemic, the Spanish Flu is "generally accepted" to have killed 25 to 50 million people. The Wikipedia page for COVID-19 cites a 2022 The Economist article that estimates 18.2 to 33.5 million death toll for the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-estimates

The COVID-19 pandemic is the 5th most deadly epidemic/pandemic in human history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics_and_pandemics#By_death_toll

[โ€“] Slatlun@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 years ago

Of course, the world population was probably less than a quarter of what it is now, so a higher percentage defintely died. Probably because of the relatively crappy health care at the time