09-16-2021, 01:57 PM
1 in 500 Americans has died of COVID-19By Dan Keating and Akilah Johnson Washington Post
At a certain point, it was no longer a matter of if the United States would reach the gruesome milestone of 1 in 500 people dying of COVID-19, but a matter of when. A year? Maybe 15 months? The answer: 19 months.
Given the mortality rate from COVID and our nation's population size, "we're kind of where we predicted we would be with completely uncontrolled spread of infection," said Jeffrey Klausner, clinical professor of medicine, population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine. "Remember at the very beginning, which we don't hear about anymore, it was all about flatten the curve."
The idea, he said, was to prevent "the humanitarian disaster" that occurred in New York City, where ambulance sirens were a constant as hospitals were overwhelmed and mortuaries needed mobile units to handle the additional dead.
The goal of testing, mask-wearing, keeping 6 feet apart and limiting gatherings was to slow the spread of the highly infectious virus until a vaccine could stamp it out. The vaccines came but not enough people have been immunized, and the triumph of science waned as mass death and disease remain. The result: As the nation's COVID death toll exceeded 663,000 this week, it meant roughly 1 in every 500 Americans had succumbed to the disease caused by the coronavirus.
While COVID's death toll overwhelms the imagination, even more stunning is the deadly efficiency with which it has targeted Black, Latino, and American Indian and Alaska Native people in their 30s, 40s and 50s.
Death at a younger age represents more lost years of life. Lost potential. Lost scholarship. Lost mentorship. Lost earnings. Lost love.
