“After a year that has darkened doorways across the U.S., the pandemic surpassed a milestone Monday that once seemed unimaginable, a stark confirmation of the virus's reach into all corners of the country and communities of every size and makeup.
“'It’s very hard for me to imagine an American who doesn’t know someone who has died or have a family member who has died,' said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics at the University of Washington in Seattle. 'We haven’t really fully understood how bad it is, how devastating it is, for all of us.'”
– Adam Geller, National Reporter for the Associated Press
America surpassed another deadly coronavirus milestone Monday, February 22. The country has recorded 500,071 deaths related to COVID-19, according to data from John Hopkins University's Coronavirus Resource Center. “How bad,” indeed. Over a half a million have died in approximately one year.
The toll recorded by Johns Hopkins University is already greater than the population of Miami or Kansas City, Missouri. It is roughly equal to the number of Americans killed in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. It is akin to a 9/11 every day for nearly six months. The death toll now surpasses the total dead in the Civil War – 498,332 combined Union and Confederate deaths.
Experts warn that about 90,000 more deaths are likely in the next few months, despite a massive campaign to vaccinate people. Meanwhile, the nation’s trauma continues to accrue in a way unparalleled in recent American life, said Donna Schuurman of the Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families in Portland, Oregon.
(Adam Geller. “Half a Million Dead in US, Confirming Virus’s Tragic Reach.” U.S. News. Associated Press. February 22, 2021.)
Urging Americans to remember the individual lives claimed by the virus, rather than be numbed by the enormity of the toll, President Joe Biden addressed the nation Monday saying …
“But as we acknowledge the scale of this mass death in America, we remember each person and the life they lived. (The president said he keeps a card in his pocket every day with the tally of those who have died from Covid-19.) The people we lost were extraordinary. We have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow. Just like that, so many of them took their final breath alone in America.”
Biden also said …
"We must end the politics and misinformation that’s divided families, communities in this country. This virus does not target Democrats or Republicans, he added, but all of our fellow Americans. Let this not be a story of how far we fell, but how far we climbed back up,"
(Dartunorro Clark. “'Find purpose': Biden marks 500,000 Covid-19 deaths with poignant address to the nation.” NBC News. February 22, 2021.)
The U.S. toll, accounting for 1 in 5 deaths reported worldwide, has far exceeded early projections, which assumed that federal and state governments would marshal a comprehensive and sustained response and individual Americans would heed warnings.
Instead, a push to reopen the economy last spring and the refusal by many to maintain social distancing and wear face masks fueled the spread.
The milestone of half a million confirmed deaths exceeds the worst-case projections from the start of the pandemic, NPR's Allison Aubrey said on Morning Edition. And new research shows that average U.S. life expectancy dropped by a year in the first half of 2020, with the pandemic mostly to blame.
(Rachel Treisman. “As U.S. Death Toll Surpasses Half A Million, Biden Plans To Order Flags To Half-Staff.” NPR. February 22, 2021.)
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden's chief medical adviser, described the pandemic's toll as historic in a Sunday interview with CNN's State of the Union.
"It's nothing like we've ever been through in the last 102 years, since the 1918 influenza pandemic," Fauci said. "To have these many people to have died from a respiratory-borne infection, it really is a terrible situation that we've been through, and that we're still going through."
On a Personal Note
Melissa Block, special correspondent and guest host of NPR's news programs, shared this story, noting that now that there are vaccines and the death rate is dropping, a new loss to COVID can feel doubly cruel …
"We're so close to the finish line, it seems like," says Lori Baron, who lost her brother Danny Volce to COVID earlier this month. He was 52. "To get so far into this and then to lose him here at this point... I think it always feels unfair, but it feels especially hard," she says.
Volce was a drummer, father of three and a constant joker, Baron says: "like having Jim Carrey as a brother."
She feels compelled to look at the COVID dashboards to frame her own loss in the context of all the others.
"I look at the number of deaths in the United States," she says, "and I just stare at that number, and I think, if Danny was still here, that number would look different. Just by one, but it would look different."
Baron focuses on the last digit of that rising number and thinks to herself, that's him.
(Melissa Block. “'To Me He's Not A Number': Families Reflect As U.S. Passes 500,000 COVID-19 Deaths.” NPR. February 22, 2021.)
Over 500,000 or 1 – reducing an unfathomable number of deaths to a single loss dramatically increases our understanding of the ultimate tragedy of the pandemic. And, to consider that so many of these precious individuals died alone speaks of untold pain and irreparable damage that will haunt families and friends forever. We must all accept the charge to remember the fallen and work to end the virus. Our job remains undone. We must carry on.
No comments:
Post a Comment