U.S. death toll from COVID hits 900K

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, N.C.

The milestone comes more than 13 months into a vaccination drive that has been beset by misinformation, though the shots have proved safe and highly effective.

“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 noted 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 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, or about 212 million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We have underestimated our enemy here, and we have underprepared to protect ourselves,” said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We’ve learned a tremendous amount of humility in the face of a lethal and contagious respiratory virus.”

Nor is COVID-19 finished with the United States. Dr. Andrew Noymer, a professor of public health at the University of California at Irvine, predicted the U.S. will hit 1 million deaths by March 1.

“I think it’s important for us not to be numbed. Each one of those numbers is someone,” said the Rev. Gina Anderson-Cloud, senior pastor of Fredericksburg United Methodist Church in Virginia. “Those are mothers, fathers, children, our elders.”

While omicron is loosening its grip on the U.S., with new cases plunging in recent weeks and the number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 turning downward, deaths are running at more than 2,400 per day on average, the highest level since last winter.

Anderson-Cloud lost her dementia-stricken father after he was hospitalized for cancer surgery and then isolated in a COVID-19 ward. He went into cardiac arrest, was revived, but died about a week later.

She planned to be by his bedside, but the rules barred her from going to the hospital. She wonders if his condition was made worse by his isolation. She wonders how many other cases like his there are.

“There are all these stories and all that pain,” she said.

COVID-19 has become one of the top three causes of death in America, behind the big two — heart disease and cancer. Noymer said if the mortality rate continues, it will shave up to two years off U.S. life expectancy.

When the vaccine was rolled out in mid-December 2020, the death toll stood at about

300,000. It hit 600,000 in midJune 2021 and 700,000 on Oct. 1. On Dec. 14, it reached 800,000.

It took just 51 more days to get to 900,000, the fastest 100,000death jump since last winter.