The coronavirus death toll is approaching the 1918 flu pandemic — with some key caveats

The United States Bureau of Census Mortality Statistics is the most important source of exact figures on the pandemic’s deaths and death rates in America, but even these are incomplete. In 1918, for instance, the area from which the Census Bureau received transcriptions of all death certificates, that is to say, the Registration Area, contained only 77.8 percent of the total estimated population of the nation.