How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going

by Vaclav Smil

Obviously, we will be able to quantify the total COVID-19 mortality only after this latest pandemic ends. Meanwhile, the best way to assess the recurrent pandemic burden is to compare it to global seasonal influenza-associated respiratory mortality. The most detailed assessment for the years 2002–2011 found a mean of 389,000 deaths (ranging between 294,000 and 518,000) after excluding the 2009 pandemic season.[85] This means that seasonal influenza accounts for about 2 percent of all annual respiratory deaths, and that its mortality rate averages 6/100,000—or 15–20 percent of the death rates recorded in the two late 20th-century pandemics (1957–1959, 1968–1970). Inversely stated, the first pandemic exacted a more than six times higher and the second one a nearly five times higher relative death toll than seasonal influenza.