"Contemporarily"[edit]

I changed "also contemporarily referred to as the 1918 Flu Pandemic or H1N1 Pandemic" to
"also now referred to as the 1918 Flu Pandemic or H1N1 Pandemic". "Contemporarily" (or
rather, contemporaneously, the correct English) means at that time, not now. The term H1N1
did not exist at the time of ths Spanish flu. Zaslav (talk) 06:03, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

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Mortality - Around the globe: third paragraph,sentence that says; In Sweden, 34,000 did.
Change did to died. 2601:581:8402:1EE0:304C:CD3D:3958:6A95 (talk) 23:17, 21 July 2020
(UTC)

 Done---Wikaviani  (talk) (contribs)
 23:35, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

First wave[edit]
Do we have any rough estimates, no matter how rough, from experts on how high the total
death count of the first wave was? Our article here says that the third wave killed "several
hundreds of thousands", making the third wave "still a lot deadlier than the first wave".
--2003:EF:170B:F523:B4E9:E872:BD91:96ED (talk) 01:37, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
It is always going to be an estimate, because no exact records were kept. The
consensus is that the second wave in late 1918 was the deadliest, and that the third
wave was deadlier than the first.--♦IANMACM♦  (talk to me) 06:55, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

NOT 17 million but 50 million deaths[edit]

The lead quotes a single source suggesting the number of deaths might have been as low
as 17 million. In truth, the more common estimate is 50 to 100 million people. I have
deleted the reference to 17 million"
Dozens of reliable sources, including CDC, are saying 50 million. Some say 50 to 100
million.

 The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about
675,000 occurring in the United States. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-
resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html
 National Public Radio: Its death toll is unknown but is generally considerd to be more
than 50 million. https://www.npr.org/2020/04/02/826358104/the-1918-flu-pandemic-was-
brutal-killing-as-many-as-100-million-people-worldwide
 US National Archives: The influenza epidemic that swept the world in 1918 killed an
estimated 50 million people. https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/
 National Geographic between 50 and 100
million people https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-cities-
flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus/
 Encyclopedia Britannica as many as 40–50 million
deaths. https://www.britannica.com/event/influenza-pandemic-of-1918-1919
 MedicineNet: killing an estimated 50-100
million people ... https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=228841
 New York Times: between 50 million and 100 million
people https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/opinion/coronavirus-1918-spanish-flu.html
 National Library of Medicine, US: caused ≈50 million deaths
worldwide, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/
 BBC: between 50 million and 100 million people are thought to have
died. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200302-coronavirus-what-can-we-learn-from-
the-spanish-flu
Peter K Burian (talk) 16:24, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Those are popular sources repeating the same numbers through citogenesis, but there
is no reason to remove the 17 million figure (which, by the way, corresponds to a global
mortality rate of roughly 1%, about the same as war-torn Europe and considerably
higher than the U.S. and other less-affected regions of the globe, such as Japan and
possibly China) from the range in the lede given that it is sourced to a recent (2018)
academic study. Frankly, the 2005 study postulating up to 100 million deaths was
something of an outlier at the time of publication relative to the numerous previous
studies over decades that gave estimates ranging from 21 million to 40 million, yet its
"50–100 million" range circulated over the Internet and has been widely repeated since,
even though it was not believed for almost a century that Spanish flu mortality could
possibly have been that high. Whether the 2005 study is correct or not, it's far from clear
that repetition in mass media should be taken as an indication that its findings are the
academic consensus, or that the 2018 reassessment should be excluded as a fringe
viewpoint (even if it is slightly on the low side).TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 17:53, 29
September 2020 (UTC)
(I've formatted the list to make it easier to follow Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 17:58, 29
September 2020 (UTC))
I disagree TheTimesAreAChanging but do not want to start an edit war by reverting.
Your comments are well thought-out but what sources confirms 17 million?? The
sources I quoted include NOT only mass media:

 United States National Library of Medicine: caused ≈50 million deaths

worldwide, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291398/ Encyclo
pedia Britannica as many as 40–50 million
deaths. https://www.britannica.com/event/influenza-pandemic-of-1918-1919
 MedicineNet: killing an estimated 50-100
million people ... https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?
articlekey=228841
  Encyclopedia Britannica as many as 40–50 million
deaths. https://www.britannica.com/event/influenza-pandemic-of-1918-1919
Peter K Burian (talk) 18:03, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
A few mass-media sources mention 17 million but the vast majority - including scientific
sources - say 50+ million: https://www.google.com/search?
q=1918+pandemic+17+million+deaths&rlz=1C1CHBF_enCA918CA918&oq=1918+pand
emic+17+million+deaths&aqs=chrome..69i57.18148j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 P
eter K Burian (talk) 18:05, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
Your thoughts ♦IANMACM♦? Peter K Burian (talk) 18:08, 29 September 2020 (UTC)
"what sources confirms 17 million??" The 2018 reassessment can be found here; I've
just been reading through it and it has a lot of useful information on death rates by
country/age group where that data is available. According to the study, estimates of 50
million deaths globally approximate data from India (considered to be the hardest-hit
country during the 1918–1919 pandemic), while estimates of 100 million or more
assume that "there would have been many countries that had even much higher
mortality rates than India," which is not supported by any available evidence. Given that
Japan, the U.K., and the U.S. all had excess mortality rates of less than 1% (~0.76%-
0.97%, ~0.28%-0.4%, and ~0.59-0.6%, respectively) and that "there is a discussion that
China was hit mildly by the 1918–1919 pandemic," a global death rate of roughly 1%
should hardly be considered "low." The data from India, moreover, contains wide
variations in the excess mortality rate (ranging from a low of 0.47% to a high of 6.66%
depending on the region) and given that India already had an unusually high mortality
rate in 1917 and that the largest mortality increase in 1918 occurred within the 0-14 age
group (which was relatively unaffected by the Spanish flu in other countries) it is likely
that other factors (famine, unrelated diseases, etc.) at least partially account for the high
1918 mortality observed. The researchers perform several consistency checks,
concluding: "We also show that it is important to test the theoretical feasibility of
estimates (e.g., 100 million deaths), because results of such tests suggest the true
estimate is very unlikely to be higher than 25 million and probably closer to our final
estimate of 17.4 million deaths (1918 and 1919
combined)."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:35, 29 September 2020 (UTC)