U.S. COVID-19 deaths exceed 300,000 people just as vaccinations begin

The number of coronavirus deaths in the United States exceeded 300,000 on Monday just as the country began distributing COVID-19 shots in a monumental campaign to conquer the outbreak.

The death toll rivals the population of St. Louis or Pittsburgh. It is equivalent to repeating a tragedy on the scale of Hurricane Katrina every day for 5 and a half months. It is more than five times the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. It equates to a 9/11 attack every day for over 100 days.

“The numbers are staggering: the most shocking respiratory pandemic we’ve experienced in more than 102 years, since the iconic Spanish flu of 1918,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, days before the fit.

The United States crossed the threshold the same day that health workers rolled up their sleeves to fire Pfizer’s COVID-19, marking the start of the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history. If a second vaccine is soon authorized, as expected, 20 million people could be vaccinated by the end of the month.

Meanwhile, a maritime change is fast approaching in Washington after an election that was, in large part, a referendum on the management of the virus by the Trump administration. President-elect Joe Biden has made it clear that his first priority will be a thorough and disciplined effort to defeat the outbreak.

The death toll was reported by Johns Hopkins University based on data provided by U.S. health authorities. The actual number of lives lost is believed to be much higher, in part due to deaths that were not accurately recorded as coronaviruses during the early stages of the crisis.

Globally, the virus is blamed for more than 1.6 million deaths.

Experts say gunfire and other measures to control cases and deaths in the US could take a long time in the spring

With a cold climate driving people indoors, where the virus spreads more easily and many Americans despise masks and other precautions, some public health authorities predict that 100,000 more could die before the end of January.

“We’re probably heading for the worst possible period because of all the things we had in the spring, which are fatigue, political resistance, maybe the loss of all the goodwill we had for people to do their part,” he said. Jennifer Nuzzo, public health researcher at Johns Hopkins.

Nuzzo contrasted the government’s scattered response with the mass mobilization that took place after the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

“Thinking now we can only absorb in our country 3,000 deaths a day as if it were a normal business, it just represents a moral failure,” he said.

Health and government officials are increasingly urging people to stay home these holidays. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has created travel risk guidelines, which classify different travel options from “lowest risk” to “highest risk.”