Fri, 24 September 2021, 6:15 AM·8-min read

We've just passed a grim coronavirus milestone: COVID-19 has now killed about as many Americans as the 1918-19 Flu. And it's nowhere near over. How can you stay safe, so you and your family don't become the next headline? Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical advisor to the President and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spoke with Major Garrett on CBS's The Takeout to discuss just that. Read on for 8 essential points that can save your life—and to ensure your health and the health of others, don't miss these Sure Signs You've Already Had COVID.

With more American deaths than the 1918-19 Flu, 675,000 and counting—"That number in and of itself, no matter what you compare it with, is a daunting and I believe depressing and horrible number to see so many Americans die from an outbreak," said Dr. Fauci. "The pandemic flu of 1918 is historic. I mean, we all refer to that as historically, the mother of all outbreaks, had killed 50 to a hundred million people worldwide and 650 or so thousand people in the United States. The population of the world at that point was one third what it is now. So on a per capita basis, we are not even one third to where we were then. However we shouldn't then say, well, it's okay and diminish it. 670,000 deaths is extraordinary. And the thing that that has to be linked up with is: We don't want that to get any worse. tI's important that back in 1918, they did not have vaccines. We now have a highly effective tool to blunt this outbreak and to essentially crush it if we get ourselves in this country and the rest of the world vaccinated. So there's a similarity in the extraordinary number of deaths in both of these now, historic pandemics, but a really important difference is that we have a tool now that we did not have back then." Take advantage of that tool and get vaccinated, he begged.