Covid-19 toll blamed on vaccine misinformation
Propelled in part by the wildly contagious Omicron variant, the US death toll from Covid-19 hit 900,000 yesterday, less than two months after eclipsing 800,000.
The two-year total, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, 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.
‘‘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,’’ said Dr Ashish K Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
He lamented that most of the deaths happened after the vaccine gained authorisation.
‘‘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 politicise this,’’ Jha said. ‘‘Those are the places where we have failed as America.’’
Just 64 per cent of the population is fully vaccinated, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nor is Covid-19 finished with the
United States: Jha said ity could reach 1 million deaths by April.
The latest bleak milestone came as Omicron loosens its grip on the country.
New cases per day have plunged by almost half since mid-January, when they hit a record-shattering peak of more than 800,000. Cases have been declining in 49 out of 50 states in the past two weeks, by Johns Hopkins’ count.
Deaths are still running high at more than 2400 per day on average, the most since last northern winter. And they are on the rise in at least 35 states, reflecting the lag time between when victims become infected and when they succumb.
Still, public health officials have expressed hope that the worst of
Omicron is coming to an end. While they caution that things could still go bad again and dangerous new variants could emerge, some places are already talking about easing precautions.
Despite its wealth and its worldclass medical institutions, the US has the highest reported toll of any country, and even then, the real number of lives lost directly or indirectly to the coronavirus is thought to be significantly higher.
Dr Joshua M Sharfstein, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said the volume of politics and misinformation around vaccines, ‘‘which are remarkably effective and safe’’, was staggering.