Tragic Math: The U.S. Exceeds 200,000 COVID-19 Deaths

Body count has long been the yardstick by which we measure calamity. There were the 58,000 U.S. lives lives lost in the Vietnam war; the 1,496 souls who perished on the Titanic. In the hours after the September 11 attacks, when the death toll was not known, then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani famously said, “The number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear, ultimately.” We are, once again, trying to bear the unbearable as the U.S. today surpassed 200,000 deaths caused in the still-rampaging COVID-19 pandemic. We remain, as we have long been, the world’s hardest-hit country, with just 4% of the global population but roughy 21% of both deaths and overall cases; it’s a dubious distinction that was fast in coming. It was not long ago, on Feb. 29, that the U.S.’s first COVID-19 death was recorded, in Washington state. By March 29, the death count had exceeded the 2,977 people who ultimately did die in the 9/11 attacks. At that time, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted that total deaths would be between 100,000 and 200,000, and the disease promptly set out to prove that prediction a tragic low-ball. On April 29, the Vietnam death toll was surpassed. On May 23 we had reached 100,000 deaths. On July 29 it was 150,000. With the 200,000 threshold now having been crossed, the outlook for the rest of the year remains grim. The Institute for Health Metrics (IMHE) at the University of ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news