# Casualties of War



## ManjaroKDE (Mar 29, 2021)

1     World War II    1941–1945     291,557
2     World War I     1917–1918      53,402
3     Vietnam War   1955–1975      47,434
4     Korean War     1950–1953      33,686

Total American Casualties           426,079

Total Covid-19 deaths                  546,144


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## Murrmurr (Mar 29, 2021)

The numbers are different on Wikipedia.

WWII - 405,399
World War I - 116,516
Vietnam - 58,209
Korean Conflict - 36,574

Still, number of covid deaths you have, 546,144, is coming close to the total number of deaths in the deadliest war in American history, the Civil War, which cost an estimated 655,000 American lives.


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## StarSong (Mar 29, 2021)

The difference in the two sets of numbers is whether only combat deaths are counted or all deaths are being counted.  "Other deaths" include non-combat deaths from bombings, massacres, disease, suicide and murder.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war

No matter how you slice it, Covid has killed a lot of Americans in just one year.


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## Murrmurr (Mar 29, 2021)

StarSong said:


> The difference in the two sets of numbers is whether only combat deaths are counted or all deaths are being counted.  "Other deaths" include non-combat deaths from bombings, massacres, disease, suicide and murder.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war
> 
> No matter how you slice it, Covid has killed a lot of Americans in just one year.


And probably deaths that occurred some time later due to battle injuries.


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## ManjaroKDE (Mar 29, 2021)

And you're not taking into account all the premature deaths that will result from having the virus in your body.  Kidney failure, heart conditions, lung damage, cancer,,,etc.  We have just begun to tally up those totals, no one really knows the outcome.


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## PamfromTx (Mar 29, 2021)

Murrmurr said:


> The numbers are different on Wikipedia.
> 
> WWII - 405,399
> World War I - 116,516
> ...


I have the # of fatalities of the Vietnam War memorized too, @Murrmurr


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## Murrmurr (Mar 29, 2021)

PamfromTx said:


> I have the # of fatalities of the Vietnam War memorized too, @Murrmurr


I came *this close* to going. I went to a recruiting office to enlist with the Marines. I passed the initial (cursory) physical but then I was sent for a bunch of xrays and they found a deformity in my spine, a fairly common type of spina-bifida that makes you particularly susceptible to tropical viruses like malaria. The Marines rated me 4-F (unacceptable) for medical reasons, so I tried to enlist in the Navy. But 4-F is 4-F for all military branches, so I couldn't serve.

Later that same year, my cousin and 2 of my close friends from high school were killed over there. You get these mixed feelings - you're relieved and depressed and also angry that you may have literally dodged the bullet that took someone you love. My older brother enlisted in the Air Force but he wasn't sent to Nam. He spent a few years in Okinawa and two in the Philippines, but most of his career he was stationed at various bases in the US as a communications instructor. He still gets those same mixed feelings when he thinks about it.


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## Pepper (Mar 29, 2021)

Murrmurr said:


> Later that same year..................


What year was that?


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## Murrmurr (Mar 29, 2021)

Pepper said:


> What year was that?


I'd just turned 18 and I'm 66 now, so 1973, '74? They were already deescalating.


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## Irwin (Mar 29, 2021)

I turned 18 about six months after U.S. involvement in the war ended. I don't remember ever giving the war much thought, growing up. Things were so bad at home with all the fighting and screaming and crying that I probably figured Vietnam couldn't be much worse. Bleh. Just thinking about those days makes me sick to my stomach.


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## Murrmurr (Mar 29, 2021)

Irwin said:


> I turned 18 about six months after U.S. involvement in the war ended. I don't remember ever giving the war much thought, growing up. Things were so bad at home with all the fighting and screaming and crying that I probably figured Vietnam couldn't be much worse. Bleh. Just thinking about those days makes me sick to my stomach.


It was a mess wasn't it? Here _and_ over there, and both messes were on television All The Time, and (kind of like now) the news was so extreme and so nihilistic you really weren't sure what to believe. Meanwhile, you're in high school where you've got boyfriend/girlfriend drama, sports drama, and drama for the sake of drama, plus we had the rural kids vs the hippy kids, the drug scene and all that BS, and some really serious crap happening at colleges and universities where people were actually dying. And you're just trying to stay out of the fog so you can plan your future, because you're 18.


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## PamfromTx (Mar 29, 2021)

Murrmurr said:


> I came *this close* to going. I went to a recruiting office to enlist with the Marines. I passed the initial (cursory) physical but then I was sent for a bunch of xrays and they found a deformity in my spine, a fairly common type of spina-bifida that makes you particularly susceptible to tropical viruses like malaria. The Marines rated me 4-F (unacceptable) for medical reasons, so I tried to enlist in the Navy. But 4-F is 4-F for all military branches, so I couldn't serve.
> 
> Later that same year, my cousin and 2 of my close friends from high school were killed over there. You get these mixed feelings - you're relieved and depressed and also angry that you may have literally dodged the bullet that took someone you love. My older brother enlisted in the Air Force but he wasn't sent to Nam. He spent a few years in Okinawa and two in the Philippines, but most of his career he was stationed at various bases in the US as a communications instructor. He still gets those same mixed feelings when he thinks about it.


I'm so sorry for your losses.   Mom's three younger brothers all joined the Air Force and Army.   My uncle who served with the Air Force was sent to Thailand for a few years during the Vietnam War.  The other two never served in Vietnam; one was stationed in Germany and the other one in Texas.


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## old medic (Mar 30, 2021)

World wide COVID deaths..... 2.79 million
WWII War non-combat murders Est...
Germany 17 million
Japan 14 million

Annual malaria deaths 1-3 million average... 
But dropped to 409000 with covid?????


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## garyt1957 (Mar 30, 2021)

Who cares about this meaningless comparison? You talk about apples to oranges, this is apples to bowling balls. They are two totally different things not even remotely related. Heart disease and cancer kill more people than covid every year and at least they're related in that they're all diseases. I've never seen either compared to war deaths.


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## Sunny (Mar 30, 2021)

And who knows how much "collateral damage" there was due to Covid?  There are only so many hospital beds, operating rooms, ventilators, doctors, and nurses. In some places, they even ran out of hospital rooms.  I'm sure thousands died of other illnesses or injuries because all the available resources were being used to fight Covid.


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## SetWave (Mar 30, 2021)

Not a fan of body counts.


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## Murrmurr (Mar 30, 2021)

garyt1957 said:


> Who cares about this meaningless comparison? You talk about apples to oranges, this is apples to bowling balls. They are two totally different things not even remotely related. Heart disease and cancer kill more people than covid every year and at least they're related in that they're all diseases. I've never seen either compared to war deaths.


Pretty sure the OP was only comparing the _impact_ of covid - lives effected - and in that regard it's not an apples/oranges comparison.


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## ManjaroKDE (Mar 30, 2021)

I guess I should have explained my post, but I have tendency over explain most things.  I could have used smoking, drunk driving, unhealthy eating,,,etc.  War on proverty, War on drugs, Star Wars, Prohibition or other examples of failed govenment programs.  The time frame was the point of the post.  It took a total of 30 years to reach the casualty numbers of war, but only 18 months to equal those figures with the war on covid. 

I guess I was tricked by the fact that our governor called out the National Guard to help control the vaccine locations, controlling traffic, checking applications, helping the medical teams administer the vaccines.   Had nothing to do with apples and oranges, needed a benchmark for comparison to make a point.


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## garyt1957 (Mar 31, 2021)

Murrmurr said:


> Pretty sure the OP was only comparing the _impact_ of covid - lives effected - and in that regard it's not an apples/oranges comparison.


It's just totally irrelevant  to me. It means nothing. But maybe it's just me.


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