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Propelled in part by the wildly contagious Omicron variant, the US death toll from Covid-19 hit 900,000 on Friday, less than two months after eclipsing 800,000. The two-year total, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than the population of Indianapolis, San Francisco, or Charlotte, North Carolina.
The milestone comes more than 13 months into a vaccination drive that has been beset by misinformation and political and legal strife, though the shots have proved safe and highly effective at preventing serious illness and death. Despite its wealth and world-class medical institutions, the US has the highest reported toll of any country and even then, the real number of lives lost directly or indirectly to the coronavirus is thought to be significantly higher.
“It is an astronomically high number. If you had told most Americans two years ago as this pandemic was getting going that 900,000 Americans would die over the next few years, I think most people would not have believed it,” said Dr Ashish K Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. He lamented that most of the deaths had happened after the vaccine gained authorization. “We got the medical science right. We failed on the social science. We failed on how to help people get vaccinated, to combat disinformation, to not politicize this,” Jha said. “Those are the places where we have failed as America.”
Just 64% of the population is fully vaccinated, or about 212 million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Nor is Covid-19 finished with the United States: Jha said the US could reach 1 million deaths by April. Deaths are still running high at more than 2,400 per day on average, the most since last winter. And they are on the rise in at least 35 states, reflecting the lag time between when victims become infected and when they succumb.
Covid-19 has become one of the top three causes of death in America, behind the big two – heart disease and cancer. “We have been fighting among ourselves about tools that actually do save lives. Just the sheer amount of politics and misinformation around vaccines, which are remarkably effective and safe, is staggering,” Sharfstein said. He added: “This is the consequence.”
Rawr
Article URL : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/04/us-covid-death-toll-surpasses-900000