The United States death toll from COVID-19 has now passed half a million people.
The United States death toll from COVID-19 has now passed half a million people.
A year ago, covid-19 had killed just a handful of people in the United States. Now, the pandemic’s official death toll equals the size of a major city, more than the population of Kansas City, Mo., and nearly as many as Atlanta or Sacramento.
We are still in the teeth of the current pandemic; it took less than five weeks to go from 400,000 dead to 500,000, and health officials have said the actual toll is probably higher.
But numbers of new covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths have recently begun to slow, and more than 1 million vaccine doses are going into American arms every day.
One month and four days ago, the Washington Post published the following article: 400,000: The Invisible Deaths of COVID-19. Two months and seven days ago, NPR posted the following article: How Do...
Nearly 400,000 Americans have now died of covid-19. It took 12 weeks for the death toll to rise from 200,000 to 300,000. The death toll has leaped from 300,000 to almost 400,000 in less than five weeks.
Just three months ago, Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s infectious-disease chief, imagined that “if we don’t do what we need to in the fall and winter, we could have 300,000 to 400,000 covid-19 deaths.”
Now, with more than 1 of every 1,000 Americans dead from the virus, a University of Washington model that predicted the current totals forecasts 567,000 U.S. deaths by April 1, a number that could jump above 700,000 if mask mandates are eased in the interim.
More than 300,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States.
It is the latest sign of a generational tragedy — one still unfolding in every corner of the country — that leaves in its wake an expanse of grief that cannot be captured in a string of statistics.
"[The death toll] should be absolutely stunning," Spencer says. "At what point do we wake up and say, this can't be normalized?"
And yet the most deadly days of the pandemic are still to come.
Losing half a million lives to this disease was unimaginable when the first few people died of COVID-19 in the U.S last February. The disease soon began to ravage nursing homes and the five boroughs of New York City, frequently striking those left most vulnerable because of age, poor health, job requirements or crowded living conditions.
Now, around 2,000 people die from the disease every day on average, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, down from a high of over 3,000 a day on average in mid-January.
The United States death toll from COVID-19 has now passed half a million people.
One month and four days ago, the Washington Post published the following article: 400,000: The Invisible Deaths of COVID-19.
Two months and seven days ago, NPR posted the following article: How Do We Grieve 300,000 Lives Lost?
'To Me He's Not A Number': Families Reflect As U.S. Nears 500,000 COVID-19 Deaths
'A Loss To The Whole Society': U.S. COVID-19 Death Toll Reaches 500,000