“It is absolutely inconceivable that we have reached this stage,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a public fitness researcher at Johns Hopkins University, 8 months after the scourge reached the richest country in the world for the first time, with her laboratories, high-flying scientists and stocks of medical supplies.
The death toll is equivalent to an 9/11 attack every day for 67 days and is roughly equivalent to the population of Salt Lake City or Huntsville, Alabama.
And it’s still going up. The average number of deaths is around 770 depending on the day, and a widely cited style from the University of Washington predicts that the death toll in the US will be in the middle of the day. But it’s not the first time It will double to 400,000 through the end of the year as schools and schools reopen and disbelievers settle. widely available until 2021.
“The concept of 200,000 deaths is very disappointing, in some amazing tactics,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s leading infectious disease specialist, told CNN.
The dark milestone reported through Johns Hopkins, based on figures provided through state fitness authorities, but the real cost is that it is believed to be much higher, in component because many COVID-19 deaths were likely attributed to other causes, that is, at first, before it became widespread. Tests.
Trump said it’s “a disgrace” that the United States has reached that number, but argued that the death toll could have been much worse.
“I think if we didn’t get it right and we didn’t get it right, you’d kill 2. 5 million people,” Trump told reporters at the White House before leaving for an election rally in Pittsburgh. He added that the United States is “. now it’s going well” and that “the inventory market is increasing. “
He also shared his often-repeated argument that China is to blame for the pandemic. In a pre-recorded speech to the United Nations General Assembly, he demanded that Beijing be found guilty of “unleashing this scourge on the world. ” accusations as unfounded.
On Twitter, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said, “That’s how bad it is. “
“It’s an amazing number that’s hard to understand,” he said. “There is a devastating human cost in this pandemic, and we cannot. “
For five months, the United States has been ahead of the world in terms of the number shown of infections shown, nearly 6. 9 million as of Tuesday, and deaths. The United States accounts for less than 5% of the world’s population but more than 20% of the world’s population. reported deaths.
Brazil ranks second with around 137,000 deaths, followed by India with around 89,000 and Mexico with around 74,000. Only 10 countries are consistently classified with COVID-19 into deaths consistent with cápit.
“All world leaders have passed the same test, some have passed, and others have failed,” said Dr. Cedric Dark, an emergency physician at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. “In the case of our country, we have failed miserably. “
Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians accounted for a disproportionate percentage of deaths, highlighting economic and physical attention disparities in the United States.
Worldwide, the virus has inflamed more than 31 million people and is reaching one million deaths, according to Johns Hopkins’ account, although the actual numbers are likely to be higher due to gaps in testing and reporting.
For the United States, I didn’t mean to go down that road.
Earlier this year, the United States was recently identified by its preparation for a pandemic. Health officials seemed confident when they met in Seattle in January to deal with the first known case of coronavirus in the country, in a 35-year-old Washington state resident. who had returned from a stopover in his circle of relatives in Wuhan, China.
On February 26, Trump published pages of the Global Health Security Index, a measure to prepare for physical fitness crises, and said, “America ranks first among the top prepared. “
That was true. The United States surpassed the other 194 countries in the index. In addition to its laboratories, experts, and strategic reserves, the United States can boast of its disease trackers and plans to temporarily talk about important crisis data. he had a reputation around the world for sending help to fight infectious diseases.
But surveillance at airports was cowardice, bans came too late. It was only later that fitness officials learned that the virus can spread before symptoms appeared, which makes the screening imperfect. The virus has also invaded nursing homes and taken advantage of poor infection controls, killing more than 78,000 people.
At the same time, gaps in leadership have led to shortages of supplies and internal warnings have been ignored to accelerate the production of masks, leaving states to compete for protective equipment.
Trump minimized the risk from the outset, complex unfounded notions of the virus’s behavior, promoted untested or harmful treatments, complained that too much evidence gave a bad U. S. symbol, and sned masks, turning face covers into a political problem.
On April 10, the president predicted that the United States would not see 100,000 dead, a milestone reached on May 27.
Nowhere has the lack of leadership been more noticed than in testing, a key to breaking the chain of contagion.
“From the beginning, we haven’t had a national control strategy,” Nuzzo said. “For reasons I can’t understand, we refuse to expand one. “
Sandy Brown of Grand Blanc, Michigan, called the record a “heartbreaker. “Her 35-year-old husband and 20-year-old son, Freddie Lee Brown Jr. and Freddie Lee Brown III, died of COVID-19 days apart in March, when fewer than 4,000 deaths were recorded in the United States.
“What moves me is that if things had been done right, we could have ended that,” said Brown, who has no other children. “Now it’s just amazing. It’s devastating.
The actual death toll from the crisis can be significantly higher: up to 215,000 more people than the same elderly man died in the United States for all reasons in the first seven months of 2020, according to CDC figures. 19 the same era was estimated at around 150,000 through Johns Hopkins.
Researchers suspect that some coronavirus deaths have been overlooked, while other deaths may have been caused through the crisis, creating such agitation that others with chronic diseases such as diabetes or central illness have been unable or unable to seek treatment.
Dark, Baylor’s emergency doctor, said that before the crisis, “people used to look at America with some respect. For democracy. For our ethical leadership in the world. Support science and use from generation to generation to the moon. “
“Instead,” he said, “what has been revealed is how unscientific we have become. “
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Associated Press writers Kelli Kennedy in Miami and Tammy Webber in Fenton, Michigan, contributed to this story.
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The Associated Press Department of Health and Science is supported by the Department of Scientific Education at Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The AP is for all content only.
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This story was first published on September 22, 2020. Updated on September 23, 2020 to correct the fact that the number of countries that have experienced the most deaths consistent with the capita than the United States is 10, not five. .
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