COVID-19 deaths eclipse 700,000 in the United States

It’s a milestone that by all accounts didn’t have to happen this soon.

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 700,000 late Friday, a number greater than the population of Boston. The last 100,000 deaths occurred during a time when vaccines were available to any American older than 12.

The milestone is deeply frustrating to doctors, public health officials and the American public, who watched a pandemic that had been easing earlier in the summer take a dark turn. Tens of millions of Americans have refused to get vaccinated, allowing the highly contagious Delta variant to tear through the country and send the death toll from 600,000 to 700,000 in 3 ½ months.

Florida had the most deaths of any state during that period, with the virus killing about 17,000 residents since the middle of June. Texas was second with 13,000 deaths. The two states account for 15% of the U.S. population, but more than 30% of COVID deaths since the nation crossed the 600,000 threshold.

Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who has analyzed publicly reported state data, said it’s safe to say at least 70,000 of the last 100,000 deaths were among unvaccinated people. And of the vaccinated people who died with so-called breakthrough infections, most got the virus from an unvaccinated person, he said.

“If we had been more effective in our vaccination, then I think it’s fair to say we could have prevented 90% of those deaths” since midJune, Dowdy said.

“It’s not just a number on a screen,” Dowdy said. “It’s tens of thousands of these tragic stories of people whose families have lost someone who means the world to them.”

Danny Baker is one of them. The 28-year-old seed hauler from Riley, Kan., contracted COVID-19 over the summer, spent more than a month in the hospital and died Sept. 14. He left behind a wife and a 7-month-old girl.

“This thing has taken a grown man, 28-year-old young man, 6-foot-2, 300pound man, and took him down like it was nothing,” said his father, J.D. Baker. “And so if young people think that they’re still ... protected because of their youth and their strength, it’s not there anymore.”

In a statement Saturday, President Biden lamented what he called the “painful milestone” of 700,000 COVID-19 deaths and renewed his pitch for people to get vaccinated.

Almost 65% of Americans have had at least one dose of vaccine, while about 56% are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

But millions are either refusing or still on the fence because of fear, misinformation and political beliefs.

“I remember when we broke that 100,000-death mark, people just shook their heads and said, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Assn. “Then we said, ‘Are we going to get to 200,000?’ Then we kept looking at 100,000-death marks” and finally surpassed the estimated 675,000 American deaths from the 1918-19 flu.

“And we’re not done yet,” Benjamin said.