# Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Thread - 2020 Breaking News **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [February 11, 2020, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758 "2020-02-11T01:16:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 5445
**Author:** ![galen\_ubal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/galen_ubal/32/4440_2.png) [@galen\_ubal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galen_ubal)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2020, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758/5445 "2020-11-13T02:08:32Z")
Running some numbers - same as I did before, really. I worked up these numbers yesterday evening my time. Figures are from [worldometer.com](http://worldometer.com) (from yesterday) for COVID-19 deaths in the US, starting with the first confirmed death on February 29 - that I could find, anyway. Numbers for combat deaths in WW2, and population of the US as of 1940 and 2020 taken from Wikipedia. For those curious, the population of the US increased by about 2.5 times. So. Since Feb 29, a period of 257 days, 247,938 Americans died of COVID, **an average of 962/day**. In WW2, 291,557 Americans died in combat. I chose the start date of 7 December 1941 and an end date of 8 August 1945\*. That’s a period of 1340 days, giving an average of 218/day. Multiplying that by 2.5 gives us an equivalent of **549/day** in 2020. Interestingly, the projected number of deaths on December 7th of this year isn’t that far off from the total raw number of combat deaths in WW2. I’m having a little trouble finding military spending by the US in WW2, but it looks like about 4 trillion dollars in today’s money. I’m kinda wondering how the American Civil War compares, but these numbers are really getting me down… \*There may have been some combat deaths included which were outside that range of dates, but I don’t think they’d affect the numbers much. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/coronavirus-covid-19-2019-ncov-thread-2020-breaking-news/847758)._