PLUS: 6% of COVID-19 deaths due to ‘only’ COVID-19 explained!
ABC NEWS – Propelled in part by the wildly contagious omicron variant, the U.S. 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.
Said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
“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.”
He lamented that most of the deaths 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.
Said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:
“We have underestimated our enemy here, and we have under-prepared to protect ourselves. We’ve learned a tremendous amount of humility in the face of a lethal and contagious respiratory virus” … read more.
VIDEO: “6% of COVID-19 deaths due to ‘only’ COVID-19” –explained by Zubin Damania, M.D.
In U.S., New case reports are waning, but deaths have yet to peak
By Julie Bosman and Mitch Smith, Feb. 4, 2022
THE NEW YORK TIMES, CHICAGO — More than 2,600 Americans are dying from Covid-19 each day, an alarming rate that has climbed by 30 percent in the past two weeks. Across the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has now claimed more than 900,000 lives.
Yet another, simultaneous reality of the pandemic offers reason for hope. The number of new coronavirus infections is plummeting, falling by more than half since mid-January.
Hospitalizations are also declining, a relief to stressed health care workers who have been treating desperately ill coronavirus patients for nearly two years.
All that has created a disorienting moment in the pandemic: Though deaths are still mounting, the threat from the virus is moving, for now, farther into the background of daily life for many Americans … READ MORE [subscription may be required].