Facebook post exaggerates seasonal flu deaths for last year

With a climbing death toll from COVID-19 grabbing daily headlines, some social media users have noted that the seasonal flu kills tens of thousands per year, too.

But an April 18 Facebook post exaggerates seasonal flu fatalities: 

"Flu killed 80k people in the U.S. last year. None of you were afraid because the media didn’t tell you to be!" 

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) 

The post appears to rely on a number used as a preliminary estimate for the 2017-18 flu season. The final figure for that year was lower than 80,000. And while the number of people who died from flu during the 2018-19 season is still preliminary, it is estimated to be less than half of what the Facebook post claims as well.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses a mathematical model to retroactively estimate the numbers of influenza illnesses, medical visits, hospitalizations, and deaths in the United States each year. The CDC first looks at in-hospital deaths and then uses death certificate data since not all flu deaths are in the hospital.

That 80,000 figure stems from a preliminary estimate provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in September 2018. At that time, the CDC said early estimates indicated that "more than 80,000 people died from flu last season" — a reference to the 2017-18 flu season.

The CDC later updated its estimate for 2017-18 to about 61,000 (though the CDC notes that the true range could be as low as 46,404 and as high as 94,987).

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The estimate for flu deaths for the following year, 2018-19, is 34,157 deaths, but that number is preliminary and will be updated at a later date when data on contemporary testing practices become available, a CDC spokesman told PolitiFact.

The Atlantic explained that seasonal flu deaths are hard to tally. 

"Flu deaths are estimated through a model that looks at hospitalizations and death certificates, and accounts for the possibility that many deaths are due to flu but aren’t coded as such," The Atlantic wrote. "If flu deaths were counted like COVID-19 deaths, the number would be substantially lower. This doesn’t mean we’re overestimating the flu. It does mean we are probably underestimating COVID-19."

RELATED: Too soon to compare number of COVID deaths to past outbreaks

A Facebook post said that "flu killed 80k people in the U.S. last year." 

Flu deaths are hard to tally. But we know that in September 2018, the CDC announced a preliminary estimate that flu deaths totaled 80,000. Later, the CDC updated its estimate to a lower number: 61,099 deaths.

The Facebook post said "last year" which we think would refer to the 2018-19 season. The CDC’s preliminary estimate is about 34,157 deaths.

We rate this claim Mostly False.