Life insurance payouts soared past $100 billion in 2021 as pandemic took over 800,000 total US lives by year end

 Payouts rose 11% in 2021 to $100.19 billion, most likely due to the pandemic, according to the American Council of Life Insurers. The increase was on the heels of a 15% year-over-year rise in 2020, when death-benefit payments totaled $90.43 billion. ... The year-over-year increases are among the largest since the 1918 flu pandemic, when payments surged 41%. They are far above the 4.9% average from 2011 to 2021, the ACLI said. Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. jumped 20% in 2021 to approximately 460,000, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Hospitalization data from the states worst affected by COVID-19 show two distinct waves of the pandemic, the second more severe in California and Texas and less severe in New York and Florida

Florida, Texas and California all lagged the outbreak in New York, but the experience of all four coincide in the second wave, which is clearly now receding.

The Spanish Flu pandemic had three waves.

1918 Pandemic Influenza: Three Waves

New York (gray), Florida (green), California (blue), Texas (pink)

The COVID-19 death toll in NYC pales in significance compared with previous epidemics there, and that's as bad as it gets in the US this time around, at least so far

Deaths per 1000:

Cholera 1832: 46

Cholera 1834: 36

Cholera 1849: 46

Dysentery/Smallpox 1851: 38

Cholera/Smallpox 1854: 45

Smallpox 1872: 30

Smallpox 1881: 29

Spanish Flu 1918: 17

COVID-19 2020: 2.26 (18,998 confirmed deaths for population of 8.399 million) 

Rush Limbaugh, The Big Fat Idiot, imagines Vitamin D was known during the Spanish Flu Epidemic when it wasn't even first theorized until 1922

In the Face of COVID-19, We’re Not Acting at All Like Americans:

In the Spanish flu, ’17, ’18, ’19, 1917, much death. Do you know that there was not one mention of it by the president of the United States at the time, Woodrow Wilson? Never talked about it. There was no national policy to deal with it. There was no shutdown. There was just, “Hey, go outside, get some fresh air, stand in the sun as long as you can, get some vitamin D, feel better.”

Vitamin D:

In 1922, Elmer McCollum tested modified cod liver oil in which the vitamin A had been destroyed.[12] The modified oil cured the sick dogs, so McCollum concluded the factor in cod liver oil which cured rickets was distinct from vitamin A. He called it vitamin D because it was the fourth vitamin to be named.[194][195][196] It was not initially realized that, unlike other vitamins, vitamin D can be synthesised by humans through exposure to UV light.

Gramps, born in 1926, says this is worse than 2008

Dad will be 94 this year if the coronavirus doesn't get him first.

He's been through a lot, seen it all. Darmouth graduate. Served in the US Navy from World War II to Vietnam, retired as a captain.

He was just a little kid during the Great Depression, didn't really know any better. But he's watched America become a lot better since then, and now it suddenly isn't.

Things may end for Dad the way they began, with Great Depression II.

Long war on terror, coronavirus, economic meltdown.

We've had war, plague and depression before in this country, sometimes in rapid succession. WWI ended with a whimper as the Spanish Flu pandemic killed tens of millions, followed quickly by the depression of 1920. That one was very deep and severe, but ended quickly because the government . . . did nothing.

Free market economies, if left to be free, quickly recover from catastrophes because debt overhangs are allowed to clear through bankruptcy. Bankruptcy is the cure.

But we can't stomach that, same as we haven't been able to say No to our children. Self-esteem and all that.

So, expect the suffering and disorder to continue.

Sad. 

Rush Limbaugh is a fool and an imbecile, says coronavirus epidemic is just the common cold, kills fewer than the flu

Here:

The coronavirus is the common cold, folks. ... The survival rate of this is 98%! You have to read very deeply to find that number, that 2% of the people get the coronavirus die. That’s less than the flu, folks. 

The maximum survival rate from the Spanish flu pandemic 100 years ago was 96.6% when at least 17 million died globally. The death rate was 3.4%. Coronavirus death rate on the Chinese mainland is nearly that right now.

Ordinary influenza kills at most not quite 650,000 people globally every year.

Coronavirus death rate climbs to 3.3%, just shy of minimum estimated Spanish flu pandemic death rate 100 years ago

A minimum of 17 million died worldwide in the Spanish flu pandemic 100 years ago when 500 million globally were infected, yielding a minimum death rate of 3.4%.

The estimates of deaths go up from there, some claiming as many as 50 million or even 100 million died.

CNBC reports this morning that total infections from Wuhan, China coronavirus number 79,400 and deaths 2,621.

The numbers are puny by comparison, but the death rate is not: 3.3%.

Absent draconian restrictions on movement and assembly this virus could kill millions similar to the Spanish flu pandemic.

The new outbreaks outside the Chinese mainland will foretell the true future for the world as many doubt the veracity of the Chinese numbers, both death counts and case counts.

Get your affairs in order: If Harvard professor is correct about global coronavirus pandemic, expect 68-136 million deaths worldwide in 2020, dwarfing deaths from ordinary influenza

Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch told The Wall Street Journal that "it's likely we'll see a global pandemic" of coronavirus, with 40 to 70 percent of the world's population likely to be infected this year.

"What proportion of those will be symptomatic, I can't give a good number," added Lipsitch, who is the Director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 

Others have recently estimated that the virus could hit 60 to 80 percent of the world's population.

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Current deaths from coronavirus officially are 1,523 out of 66,492 cases, a death rate of 2.29%.

Global population currently stands at 7.44 billion.

A 40% pandemic would infect 2.976 billion people, with 68.15 million deaths at a 2.29% death rate.

An 80% pandemic would infect 5.952 billion people, with 136.3 million deaths at a 2.29% death rate.

Ordinary influenza kills at most not quite 650,000 people globally every year.

100 years ago this year the Spanish flu infected 500 million people, 27% of the world, killing at least 17 million, a minimum death rate of 3.4%.