The Washington Post reports:

In Atlanta on Friday, President Trump talked about the number of people infected with the novel coronavirus in other countries vs. the United States. He also compared coronavirus disease with influenza.

“Over the last long period of time, you have an average of 36,000 people dying” a year, the president said, gesturing toward National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony S. Fauci, who nodded confirmation.

Trump continued: “I never heard those numbers. I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve said, ‘Does anybody die from the flu? I didn’t know people died from the flu.’ … And again, you had a couple of years where it was over a 100,000 people died from the flu.”

How the coronavirus compares with the flu

The president is correct. Seasonal influenza has killed 12,000 to 61,000 people in the United States every year since 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There have been several years where more than 100,000 Americans were killed by particularly nasty influenza strains.

One of those episodes was the 1958 pandemic, which killed 116,000 in the United States.

Another was 1918.

That is the year Trump’s paternal grandfather died.

He died of the flu. [Continue reading…]