Over 700,000 Americans Dead due to Covid-19
The number continues to rise.
As of this writing, Johns Hopkins has the US death toll at 700,502, while Worldometers has it at 719,037.
Via the NYT: U.S. Coronavirus Death Toll Surpasses 700,000 Despite Wide Availability of Vaccines.
The United States surpassed 700,000 deaths from the coronavirus on Friday, a milestone that few experts had anticipated months ago when vaccines became widely available to the American public.
An overwhelming majority of Americans who have died in recent months, a period in which the country has offered broad access to shots, were unvaccinated. The United States has had one of the highest recent death rates of any country with an ample supply of vaccines.
[…]
The recent virus deaths are distinct from those in previous chapters of the pandemic, an analysis by The New York Times shows. People who died in the last three and a half months were concentrated in the South, a region that has lagged in vaccinations; many of the deaths were reported in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas. And those who died were younger: In August, every age group under 55 had its highest death toll of the pandemic.
[…]
Close to 100,000 people across the United States have died of Covid-19 since mid-June, months after vaccines were available to American adults.
Emphasis mine.
Of course, a lot of that connects to my post earlier today.
The whole piece is worth a read, to include some additional data visualizations.
Every time I write about one of these grim milestones, I think back to an interchange I had with a colleague last fall (and I can’t recall if I have written about it or not). We were in the hallway outside my office. The colleague was annoyed at masking and social distancing. I noted at that time that “a quarter of a million deaths is not nothing.” While he concurred, he still felt like mitigation efforts were all overreactions. I am just struck that we are now, just over a year after that interchange, at basic three times as many deaths, many of which were preventable, making them all the more tragic.
I saw a graph in the Financial Times today.
At least 8000 people worldwide are dying each day; almost a quarter of them Americans!
This should NOT be happening.
Republicans apparently believe in magic.
Hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin or screaming really loudly that masks are worthless and a personal infringement.
Rejecting tested vaccines for unproven off-label use medicine. The irony. The sheer gall. It boggles my mind.
About 20% of us are just loud mouth fucking idiots too stupid to live.
The numbers are indeed a terrible condemnation of the degenerate state in which the US right has devolved. The bizarre ideologically driven madness and denial is like an inverted version of Bolshevik madness and party political power games wrapped up political fun house mirror denialism in total disregard of rational public good.
@de stijl:
It’s not that they believe it so much as they simply refuse to do anything “the libtards” promote as a good idea.
In general my request to my students with falling down masks to “make sure you’re doing all you can to keep your classmates safe” are met with neutral acquiescence, but very few expend more than minimal effort at it. When I see students who really are conscientious about trying to keep their classmates safe, I thank them for their efforts. I think it’s hard for people to take seriously when we’ve mostly been blessed with amazing health. My health is bad, but is better and better cared for by doctors than in the experience of most people in the world simply because of where we live. We tend to ignore our luck on that front.
What should we do about the next pandemic? There are more than 7.5 human incubators for infectious illnesses. Travel is efficient enough to allow a disease spreading person to reach everywhere in 24 hours. We have seen the emergence of lots of new diseases in my lifetime including Legionnaires, hantavirus, AIDS, ebola, Lyme, MERS, SARS 1, SARS 2 (Covid). Another highly dangerous infectious disease is just over the horizon; isn’t it? Do we have things in place for early detection and timely intervention? Or have we decided to rely on the mercy of viruses?
@Slugger:
As far as I can tell, we seem to be quite good at determining emerging disease threats.
Also, as far as I can tell, we seem to be quite bad at nipping said threats in the bud.
It takes American dead on American soil until pols get engaged. And then 45% of them think of it as a political opportunity.
The last two years have made me much more cynical. I am truly disgusted in how we reacted.
Disgraceful.
Last year I used to do deaths to city population comparisons here in open threads.
I stopped. I grew tired. I became disheartened.
700,000 is roughly the size of metro Washington D.C.
Imagine a hole where DC used to be.
A week or so back we passed the number of 1918 flu deaths in absolute terms.
This is by far the biggest event of premature deaths in my lifetime and many of us are “meh” or call it a hoax. Fuck them.
Of course the cautionary tale when you give up your freedom (as understood with the intellectual acumen of a poorly educated adolescent), you may face the horrible Portuguese problem.
Approximately 350,000 under Trump, basically with no vaccine.
Approximately 350,000 under Biden, and counting (I thought he was going to fix that?!)
Trump was handed a de novo situation. Biden was handed a vaccine and a year’s worth of disease management experience.
And de stijl, I don’t know anyone saying meh, or calling the disease a hoax. That’s idiotic and I’m sure rare, your hyperbole aside. Rather, the hoax BS came out of the reflexively manufactured criticism of Trump as practically the cause of the disease, a “hoax” like the now well understood Russia collusion hoax. (Which was a Clinton political op, apparent early on.)
Its completely clear, this has been turned into a political battle/issue by the ghouls. It long ceased to be a public health issue among the media, politicians and the punditry.
Almost all public policy has been misguided and inefficacious. Stuffing nursing homes, anyone?
Masks? (One of the current and most egregious examples is border policy, or the reaction to Antifa or BLM riots. In the past, small pox, typhoid etc that came via immigration was viewed negatively. Now willy-nilly immigration is denied as a potential problem, for political reasons. Trump rally’s were super spreader events; Antifa riots……….crickets. Shameful.) Vaccination is the best circumstance to have come so far, but it was oversold and has unknown knock on effects. I am vaccinated, as is my wife and daughter and (very) elderly mother in law. But this was a decision made voluntarily after consideration of risk benefit. Those with natural immunity, religious, medical or even historical racial concerns should not be vilified by an authoritarian left when it comes to injecting an experimental substance into their bodies.
@keef: click.