On Monday, the death toll from COVID-19 in the United States surpassed one million, a previously unfathomable amount that barely scratches the surface of the millions of loved ones and friends left reeling from loss and fury.
The confirmed death toll is the same as a daily 9/11 attack for 336 days. It’s about the same number of people who died in the Civil War and World War II combined. It’s as though Boston and Pittsburgh had been extinguished.
Jennifer Nuzzo, who directs a new pandemic center at Brown University School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island, said, “It’s hard to picture a million individuals being snatched from this world.” “It’s still going on, and we’re going to allow it.”
Some of those left behind claim they will never be able to return to normal. They replay voicemail recordings from their loved ones. Alternatively, you can watch old videos of them dancing. Others bristle with rage or ache in silence when they declare they’re over the infection.
‘Normal.’ Julie Wallace, 55, of Elyria, Ohio, who lost her husband to COVID-19 in 2020, said, “I despise that name.” “We’ll never be able to return to normal.”
People aged 65 and up accounted for three out of every four deaths. Men died in greater numbers than women. The majority of the deaths were white folks. COVID-19 has killed almost twice as many black, Hispanic, and Native American persons as it has killed white people.
The majority of deaths occurred in cities, although rural areas, where hostility to masks and vaccinations is common, paid a hefty price at times. The death toll is based on death certificate data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics less than 2 1/2 years after the outbreak began. However, it is estimated that the true number of lives lost to COVID-19 as a result of the disruption of the healthcare system in the world’s richest country is significantly greater.
The achievement comes more than three months after the United States passed the 900,000-death mark. Since a terrifying winter spike spurred by the omicron variety, the pace has moderated. COVID-19 deaths in the United States are averaging around 300 per day, down from a peak of around 3,400 per day in January 2021.
A week ago, the largest bell at the nation’s capital’s Washington National Cathedral tolled 1,000 times, once for every 1,000 deaths. President Joe Biden ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff on Thursday, calling each life “irreplaceable.”
“We must not grow numb to such sadness as a nation,” he stated in a statement. “We must remember to heal.”
Since vaccines became available in December 2020, more than half of the deaths have happened. Two-thirds of Americans have received all of their vaccines, and nearly half have had at least one booster dose. However, demand for the vaccine has fallen, and the push to get doses into people’s arms has been marred by misinformation, skepticism, and political hostility.
According to the CDC, unvaccinated people have a tenfold higher risk of dying from COVID-19 than those who have been properly vaccinated.
“That is what is really distressing to me,” Nuzzo remarked. Vaccines are safe and minimize the risk of serious illness, she claims. They “relatively eliminate the probability of fatality.”
In April 2020, Angelina Proia, 36, of New York, lost her father to COVID-19. She leads a Facebook support group for bereaved families, and she’s seen it split over vaccinations. People have been kicked out of the group for disseminating false information.
“I’m not interested in hearing conspiracy ideas.” Proia, who wishes her father had been vaccinated, stated, “I don’t want to hear anti-science.”
To memorialize her father, Andy Rotman-Zaid, who died of COVID-19 in December 2020, Sara Atkins, 42, of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, turns her grief into fighting for universal immunization and greater access to health care.
“My father gave me orders to put a stop to it and make sure it didn’t happen again,” Atkins said of the epidemic. “If I die of this, politicize the hell out of it,” he said.
Julie Wallace and her husband, Lewis Dunlap, had identical telephone numbers. She keeps paying to preserve his phone number. She makes the call simply to hear his voice.
“Sometimes it’s just so essential to hear that,” she explained. “It provides you a sense of security while simultaneously ripping your heart out.”
Some have turned to poetry for comfort. Trapeta Mayson, a poet and social worker in Philadelphia, established Healing Verse, a 24-hour poetry hotline. During the pandemic, traffic to the Academy of American Poets’ poets.org website increased.
Brian Sonia-Wallace, the poet laureate of West Hollywood, California, has written poems for pay all around the country. He envisions a memorial composed of a million poems written by people who do not often write poetry. They would speak with folks who were mourning and listen for commonalities. Tanya Alves, 35, of Weston, Florida, who lost her 24-year-old sister to COVID-19 in October, stated, “What we need as a nation is empathy.” “With all the cases and lives lost over two years into the pandemic, we should be more empathetic and courteous while discussing COVID.” Thousands of families were forever changed. This virus isn’t a common cold.
