US Tops 6 Million COVID-19 Cases

Yet another grim milestone.

James Joyner · Monday, August 31, 2020 · 6 comments

On August 7, the United States topped 5 million cases of the novel coronavirus. It has taken less than a month for us to add another million cases.

Indeed, we hit the did it late Friday or early Saturday using the Worldometers data that I’ve been using to keep track here.

The slightly-more-conservative Johns Hopkins figures have us at 6,002,615.

CNN:

There have been at least 6,002,615 cases of coronavirus in the United States and at least 183,203 people have died, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
JHU recorded the first case of coronavirus in the United States on January 21. Here’s how we got to more than six million:

It took the country 99 days to reach 1 million cases on April 28.
It then took 43 more days to reach 2 million cases on June 10.
It took another 28 days to surpass 3 million cases on July 8.
It took the US only 15 additional days to surpass 4 million cases on July 23.
It took the US 17 days to go over 5 million cases.
It has taken the nation 22 days since then to reach 6 million cases.

Only two other countries in the world have over 1 million reported Covid-19 cases – Brazil with roughly 3,862,000 cases and India with 3,621,000 cases.

That’s some great company right there.

Comments

Mister Bluster says:

Monday, 31 August 2020 at 13:53

Witch Doctor Trump:
JAN 22
“We have it totally under control. … It’s going to be just fine.”

Witch Doctor Trump:
FEB 24
“The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. … Stock market starting to look very good to me”

Witch Doctor Trump:
FEB 26
“And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

Witch Doctor Trump:
FEB 28
“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

Witch Doctor Trump:
MARCH 10
“And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

Witch Doctor Trump:
MARCH 17
“I’ve always known this is a real — this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”

8
inhumans99 says:

Monday, 31 August 2020 at 14:22

Mister Bluster, you should have added to your timeline:

Witch Doctor Trump:
AUGUST 31
Re-tweets racist posts that get pulled by twitter which have nothing to do with the pandemic that he should be focused on solving.

Okay, maybe he did the re-tweets before the 31st, and I did not include a direct quote but yeah, that is our President ladies and gentlemen.

4
Just nutha ignint cracker says:

Monday, 31 August 2020 at 16:02

Well at least we’ve blunted the Moore’s Law behavior of the virus in our society.

For the moment anyway.

1
CSK says:

Monday, 31 August 2020 at 16:43

@Mister Bluster:
But he wanted to see the churches “packed” on Easter.

1
JKB says:

Tuesday, 1 September 2020 at 10:47

On the other hand, as the NY Times reported on Aug 29, up to 90% of the cases may be simply to to over-amplification of virus remnants and not viable infectious loads.

The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles; the fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load, in the sample. The greater the viral load, the more likely the patient is to be contagious.

This number of amplification cycles needed to find the virus, called the cycle threshold, is never included in the results sent to doctors and coronavirus patients, although it could tell them how infectious the patients are.

In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.

On Thursday, the United States recorded 45,604 new coronavirus cases, according to a database maintained by The Times. If the rates of contagiousness in Massachusetts and New York were to apply nationwide, then perhaps only 4,500 of those people may actually need to isolate and submit to contact tracing.

You have to look at hospitalizations and deaths, which are declining.
Lounsbury says:

Thursday, 3 September 2020 at 06:18

Rather better to look at a comparative to show that in fact USA is flatlining sideways at a level that is orders of magnitude worse than every other developed country in the world.