In early December 2020, a meme began circulating titled “Deadliest Days in American History,” a sobering list of individual dates on which mass casualty events in the United States led to large losses of life — and four of the eight days were purportedly in December 2020:
Text and image versions of the list circulated, and were virtually identical except for the visual version’s coda — “wear a mask and avoid gatherings.” Both read:
Deadliest days in American history:
1. Galveston Hurricane – 8,000
2. Antietam – 3,600
3. 9/11 – 2,977
4. Last Thursday – 2,861
5. Last Wednesday – 2,762
6. Last Tuesday – 2,461
7. Last Friday – 2,439
8. Pearl Harbor – 2,403
For the purposes of this fact check, we will operate off the assumption that this meme was relevant to December 7 2020, with the dates as follows:
- Last Thursday [December 3 2020], 2,861;
- Last Wednesday [December 2 2020],2,762;
- Last Tuesday [December 1 2020], 2,461;
- Last Friday, [December 4 2020], 2,439.
We found a similar backwards-counting list of similar description from April 2018; of course, the list did not have the 2020 dates. It also listed numbers one and two as the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 and the Battle of Antietam during the Civil War, providing figures of 8,000 and 3,600 respectively.
Third on that list was not 9/11 (which was in the fourth spot), but the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. All other entries would be pushed down by December 1 through December 4 2020, if the meme was accurate. As far as those four historical events were concerned, existing records indicated the following number of people died:
- Galveston Hurricane, between 6,000 and 12,000 people;
- Battle of Antietam, 3,650 (approximately);
- San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, more than 3,000 (estimated);
- September 11 2001 (9/11), 2,977.
In the meme and text-based shares, the purported number of deaths on December 1 through December 4 2020 are listed above as:
- Last Thursday [December 3 2020], 2,861;
- Last Wednesday [December 2 2020],2,762;
- Last Tuesday [December 1 2020], 2,461;
- Last Friday, [December 4 2020], 2,439.
Using Google’s pandemic dashboard, we accessed the provided daily numbers. Numbers on the meme are listed and struck through, numbers from the dashboard are bolded. Bolded numbers in red were higher than listed in the meme, while bolded numbers in green were over-counted by the meme:
- Last Tuesday [December 1 2020],
2,461, 2,610 [difference of +149]; - Last Wednesday [December 2 2020],
2,762, 2,885 [difference of +123]; - Last Thursday [December 3 2020],
2,861, 2,857 [difference of -4]; - Last Friday, [December 4 2020],
2,439, 2,637. [difference of +198].
Overall, the four deadliest days in December 2020 apparently underestimated the four-day aggregate by just under 270, and in three of four figures were lower than the actual number of deaths on those individual days. CBS News independently examined the viral “Deadliest Days in American History” list on December 9 2020, also indicating the order of events and numbers were close to accurate:
Four of the deadliest days in U.S. history were reported last week, with COVID-19 deaths surging across the country. A now-viral list compiled by Political Wire showed that last Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday [December 1 through 4 2020] were among the top 10 deadliest days in U.S. history due to the coronavirus.
According to data tracked by Johns Hopkins University, 2,879 deaths from COVID-19 were reported in the U.S. on Thursday, December 3 — the highest number of deaths recorded in the U.S. on a single day during the coronavirus pandemic.
The second deadliest day of the pandemic occurred the day before, on Wednesday, December 2, with 2,804 COVID-19 deaths recorded.
On Tuesday, December 1, there were 2,597 coronavirus deaths recorded in the U.S. And on Friday, December 4, there were 2,607.
These four days aren’t just some of the deadliest days of the pandemic so far — they’re also some of the deadliest days ever in the U.S.
CBS News attributed the list to the site PoliticalWire.com, adding that other mass casualty dates were not included on the original list:
Political Wire did not include several other Civil War battles with higher tolls over several days, or D-Day or other battles with American casualties overseas.
For example, Battle of Gettysburg’s casualties were estimated at near 35,000 across days of combat.
The Great Courses Daily provided a list of the ten deadliest Civil War battles, nine of which had death tolls exceeding the events or dates listed on the meme. The Battle of Antietam was included, however, indicating no particular decision to exclude Civil War battles (whose casualties were solely American) was consciously made. (We found no such numbers per day for the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, but the United States population at the time was less than a third than the population in 2020).
Consequently, we have rated this claim as Mixed. If Civil War battles were specifically excluded, the list would be slightly more accurate. Daily rates of death for individual dates in December 2020 varied between credible sources at the time the “Deadliest Days in American History” list circulated, and those figures would not likely be finalized for several weeks. Overall, the mass casualty events and respective death tolls listed were largely accurate, and the individual rates of deaths on days between December 1 and December 4 2020 were broadly in line with reported figures.
- "Deadliest Days in American History"
- "Deadliest Days in American History"
- Deadliest days in American history: 1. Galveston Hurricane - 8,000 2. Antietam - 3,600 3. 9/11 - 2,977 4. Last Thursday - 2,861 5. Last Wednesday - 2,762 6. Last Tuesday - 2.461 7. Last Friday - 2,439 8. Pearl Harbor - 2,403
- 10 Deadliest Days in American History
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- Casualties of Battle | Antietam
- San Francisco earthquake of 1906
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- Deadliest Days in American History | December 2020
- Four of the deadliest days in U.S. history were reported last week
- Battle of Gettysburg
- The Ten Bloodiest Battles of the Civil War