The U.S. death toll from COVID has reached 1 million. The chilling number is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 336 days. It is roughly about how many Americans died in the Civil War and World War II combined.
“It is hard to imagine a million people plucked from this earth,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, who leads a new pandemic center at the Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island. “It’s still happening, and we are letting it happen.”
Many families and loved ones say they cannot return to normal. All they have left are voice and text messages or watching old videos. Not to mention the anger they feel when people think everything is “back to normal.” “‘Normal.’ I hate that word,” said Julie Wallace, 55, of Elyria, Ohio, who lost her husband to COVID-19 in 2020. “All of us never get to go back to normal.”
COVID-19 Death Statistics
Three out of every four deaths were people who were 65 and older. And more men passed away than women. Black, Hispanics, and Native Americans were about twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as their white counterparts. Sadly, most deaths happened in urban areas.
The pandemic’s current death toll is based on death certificate data compiled by the CDC and National Center for Health Statistics. However, experts believe that the number of COVID-19-related deaths is far higher. The U.S. has the highest reported number of COVID-19-related deaths of any country. The one million mark comes precisely three months after the U.S. reached 900,000 deaths. The pace has slowed since the winter surge fueled by the Omicron variant.
The U.S. averages about 300 COVID-19 deaths per day compared to about the 3400 deaths a day in January 2021. Unfortunately, new cases are rising again, climbing more than 60% in the last two weeks. Currently, the U.S. averages about 86,000 cases per day, which is still below the all-time high of over 800,000. A week ago, the Washington National Cathedral in the nation’s capital tolled 1000 times, once for every 1000 deaths. In addition, President Biden ordered flags lowered to half-staff and called each life “an irreplaceable loss.” “As a nation, we must not grow numb to such sorrow,” he said. “To heal, we must remember.”
More than half the deaths have occurred since vaccines became available in December 2020. Two-thirds are fully vaccinated, and nearly half of them had at least one booster dose, but the demand for the vaccine has plummeted. According to the CDC, unvaccinated people have a ten times greater risk of dying of COVID-19 than the fully vaccinated.
