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Pandemic influenza planning is the focus of multiple policy debates, and nations are spending billions of dollars preparing for this looming threat. Prior estimates of worldwide deaths have ranged from 2 million up to 1 billion. In this study, researchers estimated global mortality for a theoretical event in 2004, using historical vital registration data from the 1918–1920 pandemic. They applied regression models to assess the effect of income on pandemic mortality.
Among 29 countries with available data, including the U.S., mortality in the 1918–1920 pandemic varied more than 30-fold. The authors projected a total of 62 million deaths in a modern pandemic, with 96% in low-income countries. People younger than 45 would account for 86% of dea…