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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow Did This Many Deaths Become Normal?
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/03/covid-us-death-rate/626972/The united states reported more deaths from COVID-19 last Friday than deaths from Hurricane Katrina, more on any two recent weekdays than deaths during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more last month than deaths from flu in a bad season, and more in two years than deaths from HIV during the four decades of the AIDS epidemic. At least 953,000 Americans have died from COVID, and the true toll is likely even higher because many deaths went uncounted. COVID is now the third leading cause of death in the U.S., after only heart disease and cancer, which are both catchall terms for many distinct diseases. The sheer scale of the tragedy strains the moral imagination. On May 24, 2020, as the United States passed 100,000 recorded deaths, The New York Times filled its front page with the names of the dead, describing their loss as incalculable. Now the nation hurtles toward a milestone of 1 million. What is 10 times incalculable?
Many countries have been pummeled by the coronavirus, but few have fared as poorly as the U.S. Its death rate surpassed that of any other large, wealthy nationespecially during the recent Omicron surge. The Biden administration placed all its bets on a vaccine-focused strategy, rather than the multilayered protections that many experts called for, even as America lagged behind other wealthy countries in vaccinating (and boosting) its citizensespecially elderly people, who are most vulnerable to the virus. In a study of 29 high-income countries, the U.S. experienced the largest decline in life expectancy in 2020 and, unlike much of Europe, did not bounce back in 2021. It was also the only country whose lowered life span was driven mainly by deaths among people under 60. Dying from COVID robbed each American of about a decade of life on average. As a whole, U.S. life expectancy fell by two yearsthe largest such decline in almost a century. Neither World War II nor any of the flu pandemics that followed it dented American longevity so badly.
Every American who died of COVID left an average of nine close relatives bereaved. Roughly 9 million people3 percent of the populationnow have a permanent hole in their world that was once filled by a parent, child, sibling, spouse, or grandparent. An estimated 149,000 children have lost a parent or caregiver. Many people were denied the familiar rituals of mourningbedside goodbyes, in-person funerals. Others are grieving raw and recent losses, their grief trampled amid the stampede toward normal. Ive known multiple people who didnt get to bury their parents or be with their families, and now are expected to go back to the grind of work, says Steven Thrasher, a journalist and the author of The Viral Underclass, which looks at the interplay between inequalities and infectious diseases. Were not giving people the space individually or societally to mourn this huge thing thats happened.
After many of the biggest disasters in American memory, including 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, it felt like the world stopped, Lori Peek, a sociologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder who studies disasters, told me. On some level, we owned our failures, and there were real changes. Crossing 1 million deaths could offer a similar opportunity to take stock, but 900,000 deaths felt like a big threshold to me, and we didnt pause, Peek said. Why is that? Why were so many publications and politicians focused on reopenings in January and Februarythe fourth- and fifth-deadliest months of the pandemic? Why did the CDC issue new guidelines that allowed most Americans to dispense with indoor masking when at least 1,000 people had been dying of COVID every day for almost six straight months? If the U.S. faced half a year of daily hurricanes that each took 1,000 lives, it is hard to imagine that the nation would decide to, quite literally, throw caution to the wind. Why, then, is COVID different?
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uponit7771
(90,336 posts)... and killing hundreds of thousands of Americans.
To this second the reporting is as if Taiwan's and Australia's NPI did even exist and we had no choice but to have nearly a million dead Americans
leftstreet
(36,108 posts)WhiskeyGrinder
(22,336 posts)crickets
(25,976 posts)flying_wahini
(6,594 posts).more Covid deaths in 2 years than 40 years of HIV .
Stuart G
(38,421 posts)Paladin
(28,256 posts)Hugin
(33,140 posts)Was going on. I will admit they began forming when an incompetent murderous criminal was installed as President. Largely to silence.
But, even at that I am embarrassed at my naiveties about what drives a substantial number of Americans.
spanone
(135,831 posts)Hugin
(33,140 posts)Meowmee
(5,164 posts)Meowmee
(5,164 posts)Strategies to prevent loss of life like telling people not to wear masks etc, then wear them, then stop too early numerous times, no proper shut downs and so on. No proper vaccine mandates and so much more. Deaths are at way over a million and who knows how many otherwise affected. It has been one massive f up. No true and effective shutdowns with people getting the help they need to stay home. Huge numbers of people who dont give a damn as long as its not them directly affected.
Warpy
(111,255 posts)We've got 17% of the world's deaths with something like 4.5% of the world's population. Two and a half years ago I predicted 1-1.5 million of us would die from this thing due to a shitty culture, poor leadership, and rotten health care. I am not happy to have been rifght about this.
Developed country, my underpaid and overworked ass. Our military is developed and our billionaires are fat but the rest of us are overworked, underpaid and neglected and it is showing rather badly.
Richard58
(239 posts)The fact that almost 1 million people have died from Covid just blows my mind. And what is worse is that people seem to think this is no big deal! The overwhelming majority of these deaths were preventable if people simply followed the CDC guidelines. But unfortunately we have a HUGE swath of people in this country who are selfish, scientifically illiterate morons. They refused to get vaccinated, refused to wear masks and refused to social distance. All in the name of "freedom". You see, in their tiny minds it was a horrible violation of their rights to ask them to wear a mask while they spent 15 to 20 minutes in a store. And to not be able to pack into crowded bars? The horror! And why take a proven vaccine when horse dewormer and having a healthy immune system work just as well? Ugh.
Of course if we had followed the lead of sane countries like New Zealand and South Korea the pandemic would have been mostly over by the summer of 2000. But we had an orange imbecile in charge of the country at the time and he told us we didn't need to do anything because it would go away, "like a miracle". And we see how well his prediction turned out.
Frankly I am embarrassed that the richest, most powerful nation on earth fucked up our Covid response so badly. We completely dropped the ball. We are a joke. And now people are still dying every day from Covid and the CDC is saying it is OK to drop of bunch of restrictions! I mean, we're used to people dying from Covid now right? No one cares anymore. I am ashamed of my country.
sciencescience
(109 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Well, the Third Reich, communist revolutions in Russia and China, Khmer Rouge -- many incredibly many others smaller and large -- and didn't pause, and all answers have to look to what different types of people and societal groups here have in common.
The attempts to impose hard-line socialism/communism on Russia alone are believed to have cost 100,000,000 people their lives. And millions of survivors still remember their suffering, even if some chose long ago to deny and forget their own roles in the deaths. As most of those who participated in our holocaust undoubtedly will.
StarryNite
(9,444 posts)kicking...
Roc2020
(1,616 posts)1,000,000 deaths and counting. It's almost as if your Duty now is to risk your life for the State or you will be shunned. oh my.
Laura PourMeADrink
(42,770 posts)House panel says Trump officials impeded COVID-19 fight for political reasons
Albeit I watched closely because my dad was one of those who died because Trump didn't warn us. The story died before the end of the day. I will never understand either why we have no PR for important committee findings! This story to me is one of the biggest neglected stories in my lifetime
Jetheels
(991 posts)(Sorry I dont want to dirty my keyboard typing full names).
Nululu
(840 posts)I am still scared, despite being vaxxed. I am astonished at politicians fear of punishing those evil people. They refuse to put them on the do not fly list. The prosecutions are mild for attacking retail clerks, if the cops even show up. No consequences.
I wonder if people would be so forgetful and cavalier if it was 1% of our children had died instead of our elderly because we place so little value on older Americans. They are thrown out of their jobs. Invited to die by journalists who interviewed the elderly to ask if they'd die for society. Is any other country as messed up as ours? Where teachers are forbidden from talking about history and society? Where women are treated as chattel. Where politicians gleefully bring back Jim Crow voting policies and eugenics are debated. It's seriously depressing.
Fla Dem
(23,661 posts)While some states do report daily, some states only report Monday through Friday, some 3x a week Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So Friday statistics are not a daily count. States do report a number on Fridays, but in many cases it is a sum of days during the week that have not yet been reported. What is more accurate are the weekly counts. For me that's Saturday thru Friday, because most states do report on Fridays.
So the weekly count of Covid Deaths for the "week" beginning Saturday 2/26 and ending Friday 3/4 ......
Saturday 2/26.....563 Sat & Sun #'s low because most states do not report everyday, especially Sat & Sun.
Sunday 2/27.......182
Monday 2/28......2213 High because again, some states do not report everyday particularly over the week end, so this number includes some states' Saturday and Sunday numbers.
Tuesday 3/1........1899
Wednesday 3/2...2010
Thursday 3/3......1743
Friday 3/4...........1908
Total for week beginning Saturday 2/2/2022 10,518. 7 day average 1503.
Monday, Wednesday and Friday numbers will always be high because they include the days' counts that some state do not report on a daily basis.
Not diminishing the Covid death toll at all. I'm as shocked as anyone that there doesn't continue to be more attention paid to the toll it has and is taking......10,518 death from 2/26 to 3/4. I can't even wrap my head around that number. There should be news tickers running across every major television channel and cable news channel with the daily and weekly numbers 24/7..
The problem is we've all become tried of hearing about covid. "We" have accepted "it is what it is". People want to get back to what is a "normal life". At this point, nothing is going to change that.
barbtries
(28,793 posts)the distress is real.
I also think there has been a degradation of empathy in our society, perhaps world-wide.
I was shocked while having an argument about getting vaccinated via text with the daughter of one of my best friends. There were "only" about 600,000 deaths from COVID at the time. I offered that up as one part of my pleading to her to get vaccinated. She wrote back that the 600,000 dead "have nothing to do with me."
I mean, aren't we all diminished by this loss?! This woman considers herself well-informed, christian, a good person...I think she's a good example of the DunningKruger effect. Nothing I said meant anything to her even though I debunked every "fact" she came up with. for instance, the shot has carcinogens in it, and the vaccination was the reason for the Delta variant.
total frustration.
live love laugh
(13,104 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,649 posts)Covid is no longer the shiny object du jour.