COVID-19 in the Context of Military Deaths in U.S. Wars (as of 13 January 2020)

The first case of COVID-19 arrived in the United States about a year ago. Since it arrived, the CDC reports that over 379,000 Americans have died from the disease. Many scholars and public health officials have reported that these deaths are due not only to the virulence of the virus but to the failed response by government leaders.

With thousands of people dying every day, it can be difficult to understand the scale of the COVID-19 tragedy. In the graph below, I try to offer some sense of the scale by comparing the pandemic to several of the major wars fought by U.S. forces over the past two-and-a-half centuries. What we see is devastation on par with the bloodiest wars in U.S. history—with a daily death rate twice that of the U.S. Civil War.