Health and Lifestyle

Fact Check: most deadly days in US history

15 Comments

A graphic that has been making the rounds on the Internet provides a list of the eight deadliest days in United States history. How accurate is that list, and what is the reality?

How accurate is this meme? Not very.

We pulled meteorological, military, and disaster records for a list of fatalities on US soil, including US territories. We reviewed data from The COVID tracking project provided by The Atlantic. Our conclusion? The graphic isn’t accurate based on available data.

The graphic gets the first one right with the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, the deadliest single day tragedy in United States history. The battle of Antietam is more complicated. If you count both Union and Confederate deaths, it is the second on the list. If you count Union forces only, it falls out of the top ten, with 2600 fatalities. The numbers fall apart after that. The San Francisco Earthquake, the San Ciriaco Hurricane, Hurricane Maria, and the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane are all left off. Although you could argue that almost all of the deaths associated with Hurricane Maria and the San Ciriaco Hurricane of 1899 deaths were in Puerto Rico, they are Americans. In 1899 Puerto Rico was occupied by the United State military after the island was invaded, and the horrors of Hurricane Maria are well documented.

As for the COVID numbers, the variations in daily death counts occur because each state reports its data differently and at different times. Aggregating this data by various sources uses different methodologies, creating the daily variances from the other sources.

So what is the correct list

  1. 1900 Galveston Hurricane – 6,000 to 12,000 (estimated)
  2. 1899 San Ciriaco Hurricane – 3,389
  3. 1906 San Francisco Earthquake – 3,000 (estimated)
  4. 2001 9/11 Terrorist Attacks – 2,996 (all locations)
  5. 2017 Hurricane Maria – 2,982
  6. 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane – 2,823
  7. 2020 May 20, COVID-19 – 2,752
  8. 2020 December 2, COVID-19 – 2,733
  9. 2020 December 3, COVID-19 – 2,706
  10. 2020 April 29, COVID-19 – 2,685

There are several multiday historical events, particularly during the Civil War such as the Battle of Gettysburg that produced a total fatality count that was higher. However, this wasn’t on a single day, and when daily fatalities of these battles are considered, the incidents don’t crack the top ten.

The sharing of factual data for COVID is critical to not fuel misinformation and further erode trust in the data. Finally, without accurate records for daily deaths attributed to the 1918 Flu Pandemic, it is difficult to determine if any single day would move into this chart.

15 thoughts on “Fact Check: most deadly days in US history”

  1. In 2018 we averaged almost 7k deaths a day. This does not say it is from one event it says the most deadly days period making it wildly misleading. Plus we averaged 6.5k deaths a day from the Spanish flu in oct of 1918. Everyone of those days would eclipse this virus. So misleading. With that said, wear a mask and keep your distance.

    1. You are amalgamating normal mortality with key events outside of normal occurrences that lead to catastrophic loss of life in US history. It is correct that about 7K people in 2018 died a day. The CDC database shows that there is an unnatural increase in deaths in 2020, in excess of 300K people so far in 2020, that is not accounted for normal “events.” We will ask, as others have posted, a link to daily statistics to the 1918 Flu Pandemic from a reliable source such as the CDC, AMA, WHO, The Lancet, NEJM, etc. Provide a source that has certified data on the 1918 Pandemic with daily data from officials, and we will happily update the graphic.

    1. Appreciated, but there is no official information on daily deaths as logged by health officials of the time. The article acknowledges the 1918 Flu Pandemic and notes that daily numbers are not available.

      1. Well, I don’t like to be argumentative, but I don’t think you’ve subjected other items on the list to that kind of scrutiny.

        1. The COVID numbers are pulled from The COVID Tracking Project by The Atlantic, and represents one of the most conservative datasets available on the web. We have provided details, without going into pedantic on all of the non-COVID related “events.”

          1. Where can I find the authoritative official death records that support the claims for the Galveston Hurricane?

          2. A big difference between a single-day event and an event over an entire year. The minimum death count in 1900 is 6000 in a single day – and actually over just a few hours.

  3. Looks like the “fact-checkers” still can’t get it right. There should be no Covid days on the list at all. The month of October 1918 featured an average of 6500 deaths a day for the whole month, just due to the Spanish flu. You are incompetent.

      3. Well, at 195,000 for the month, that’s an average of about 6,300 a day. Of course, not all days were that high; but if we approximate with a straight-line trend, with the lowest daily number at 0 and the highest at 12,600, the number of days with over 3,000 deaths would be about 21. So yes, that would dominate the Top Ten list, the only exception being Galveston. The likelihood that only 8 days or fewer out of that month had over ~3,000 deaths seems pretty remote.

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