WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (BUS): Driven in part by a highly contagious omicron variant, the US death toll from COVID-19 reached 900,000 on Friday, less than two months after it topped 800,000.
The Associated Press (AP) reports that the two-year total, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is greater than residents of Indianapolis, San Francisco or Charlotte, North Carolina.
This historic achievement comes more than 13 months after a vaccination campaign that plagued disinformation and political and legal struggles, even though the shots have proven to be safe and highly effective in preventing serious illness and death.
It is a large astronomical number. Dr Ashish K Jha, Dean of Brown University, said, “If I had told most Americans two years ago as this pandemic approached that 900,000 Americans would die over the next few years, I think most people would not have believed it.” College of Public Health.
He regretted that most of the deaths occurred after the vaccine was licensed.
“We got the medical sciences right. We failed the social sciences. We failed at how to help people get vaccinated, combat misinformation, and not politicize it,” Jha said. “Those are the places where we have failed as America.”
President Joe Biden lamented the achievement in a statement released Friday night, saying, “After nearly two years, I know that the emotional, physical, and psychological weight of this pandemic has been extremely difficult to bear.”
He again urged Americans to get vaccinations and booster shots. “Two hundred and fifty million Americans have come forward to protect themselves, their families, and their communities by getting at least one bullet — and we’ve saved more than a million Americans as a result,” Biden said.
Only 64% of the population, or about 212 million Americans, have been fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And COVID-19 is not over with the US: Jha said the US could reach 1 million deaths by April.
Among the dead was Susan Glaister Berg, 53, of Sterling Heights, Michigan, whose children had to take off a ventilator just before Thanksgiving after the Covid-19 virus destroyed her lungs and kidneys.
“She always cared more about people than she cared about herself. She always took care of everyone,” said a daughter, Halle Fortuna. “So this is half of it all: she took care of everyone. Not very selfish. “
Glaister Berg, a smoker, was in poor health and apparently unvaccinated, according to her daughter. Fortuna just got the booster herself.
“We all want it to disappear. I personally don’t see it disappearing any time soon,” she said. “I think it’s about learning to live with it and I hope we all learn to take better care of each other.”
The latest grim event came as Omicron loosens his grip on the country.
New cases per day have fallen by nearly half a million since mid-January, when it reached a record peak of more than 800,000. Cases have fallen in 49 states in the past two weeks, according to a Johns Hopkins count, and the 50, Maine, report says confirmed infections are declining there as well, falling sharply over the past week.
Also, the number of Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 has fallen 15% since mid-January to about 124,000.
The death rate is still rising to more than 2,400 deaths per day on average, the most since last winter. It is on the rise in at least 35 states, reflecting the time lag between victims being injured and their surrender.
However, public health officials have expressed hope that the worst of the omicron will end. While they warn that things could go wrong again and dangerous new variants could emerge, some places are already talking about relaxing the precautions.
Director of Public Health Dr. Barbara Ferrer said Thursday that Los Angeles County may end its outdoor mask requirements within a few weeks.
She warned that “beyond the surge does not mean that the epidemic is over or that transmission is low, or that there will be no unexpected waves of surges in the future.”
Despite its wealth and world-class medical facilities, the United States has the highest reported toll of any country, and even then, the true number of lives lost directly or indirectly due to the coronavirus is believed to be much higher.
Experts believe some COVID-19 deaths have been wrongly attributed to other cases. It is believed that some Americans died of chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes because they were unable or unwilling to seek treatment during the crisis.
Reverend Gina Anderson Cloud, chief pastor at Fredericksburg United Methodist Church in Virginia, has lost her father with dementia after he was hospitalized for cancer surgery and then isolated in a COVID-19 ward. He went into cardiac arrest, was revived, but died about a week later.
She was planning to be at his bedside, but the rules prevented her from going to the hospital.
“I think it’s important for us not to feel numb. Every single one of these numbers is a person,” she said of the death toll. “These are mothers, fathers, children, our elders.”
When the vaccine was introduced in mid-December 2020, the death toll was about 300,000. It reached 600,000 in mid-June 2021 and 700,000 on October 1. On December 14 it reached 800,000 on December 14.
It only took 51 days to reach 900,000, the fastest jump of 100,000 since last winter.
Dr. Joshua M. “We have learned a tremendous amount of humility in the face of a deadly and contagious respiratory virus.”
The most recent 100,000 deaths include those caused by both the Delta and Omicron variant, which began spreading rapidly in December and became the dominant version in the United States before the month was over.
While Omicron has been shown to be less likely to cause severe disease than Delta, the sheer number of people who have contracted it has contributed to the higher death toll.
Ja said he and other medical professionals are frustrated that policymakers seem to have run out of ideas to get people to roll up their sleeves.
“There are not many tools left. We need to redouble our efforts and come up with new ones,” he said.
COVID-19 has become one of the top three causes of death in America, after the two leading causes – heart disease and cancer.
“We’ve been squabbling among ourselves about tools that actually save lives. Just the sheer amount of policy and misinformation about vaccines, which are remarkably effective and safe, is astonishing,” Charfstein said.
“This is the result,” he added.
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