[netman21]

Largest in recorded history is a bit of hyperbole. In the 1800s something like 80% of all Americans had the TB bacillus and of those that came down with TB a huge percentage died.

[SecretDreams]

Hopefully we can course correct before we have to relearn lessons from the 1800s.

[hinkley]

Maybe if we learned about the 1800’s in school things would be going better now.

[cushychicken]

I agree, the emphasis probably should be on “recorded”, not “largest”.

[raffraffraff]

I assumed that the emphasis is correctly on "outbreak", ie: a single statistically significant increase, as opposed to a progressive increase over centuries (which is what led to the huge numbers in the 19th century)

[odyssey7]

That’s pretty much what I was looking for in clicking on the article, by what logic or rationale they made that statement.

[lolinder]

Yeah, the phrase they were looking for is "largest on record", or more precisely "largest in the CDC's records".

"Recorded history" has a very specific definition that places it in contrast with "prehistory": it's the time period in which we have written records of any sort, as opposed to the time period in which there is no surviving writing. That both phrases have "record" in them doesn't make them synonymous.

[hinkley]

Largest means a very different thing when the us population is 40 million versus 400m.

What’s a heinous tragedy in one could be an existential threat in the other.

[boringg]

How are you going to get people to click on the article without hyperbole?