Post Tribune (Sunday)

Virus deaths eclipse 700K in the US

Delta variant has swept the country among unvaccinat­ed

- By Tammy Webber and Heather Hollingswo­rth

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 — which overwhelmi­ngly prevent deaths, hospitaliz­ations and serious illness — were available to any American over the age of 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 send the death toll from 600,000 to 700,000 in 3 months.

Florida suffered the most death 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 country’s population, but more than 30% of the nation’s 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 in unvaccinat­ed people.

“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 mid-June, Dowdy said.

“It’s tens of thousands of these tragic stories of people whose families have lost someone who means the world to them,” Dowdy said.

Danny Baker is one of them.

The 28-year-old seed hauler from Riley, Kansas, 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 baby girl.

“This thing has taken a grown man, 28-year-old young man, 6-foot-2-inch, 300-pound man, and took him down like it was nothing,” said his father, 56-yearold J.D. Baker, of Milford, Kansas.

In the early days of the pandemic, Danny Baker insisted he would be first in line for a vaccine, recalled his mother.

But just as vaccinatio­ns opened up to his age group, the U.S. recommende­d a pause in use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to investigat­e reports of rare but potentiall­y dangerous blood clots. The news frightened him, as did informatio­n swirling online that the vaccine could harm fertility, though medical experts say there’s no biological reason the shots would affect fertility. His wife also was breastfeed­ing, so they decided to wait. Health experts now say breastfeed­ing mothers should get the vaccine for their own protection and that it may even provide some protection for their babies through antibodies passed along in breastmilk.

“There’s just a lot of miscommuni­cation about the vaccine,” said his wife, 27-year-old Aubrea Baker, a labor and delivery nurse.

When deaths surpassed 600,000 in mid-June, vaccinatio­ns already were driving down caseloads, restrictio­ns were being lifted and people looked forward to life returning to normal over the summer. Deaths per day in the U.S. had plummeted to an average of around 340, from a high of over 3,000 in mid-January. Soon afterward, health officials declared it a pandemic of the unvaccinat­ed.

But as the delta variant swept the country, caseloads and deaths soared — especially among the unvaccinat­ed and younger people, with hospitals around the country reporting dramatic increases in admissions and deaths among people younger than 65. They also reported breakthrou­gh infections and deaths, though at far lower rates, prompting efforts to provide booster shots to vulnerable Americans.

Now, daily deaths are averaging about 1,900 a day. Cases have started to fall from their highs in September but there is fear the situation could worsen in the winter.

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.

In a statement Saturday, President Joe Biden lamented what he called the “painful milestone” of 700,000 COVID-19 deaths and said that “we must not become numb to the sorrow.”

He renewed his pitch for people to get vaccinated.

The first known deaths from the virus in the U.S. were in early February 2020. It took four months to reach the first 100,000 deaths.

“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 Associatio­n. “Then we said, ‘Are we going to get to 200,000?’ Then we kept looking at 100,000death marks,” and finally surpassed the 675,000 American deaths from the 1918-19 flu pandemic.

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

 ?? CHARLIE RIEDEL/AP ?? Aubrea Baker, with her daughter Haylen, visits her late husband’s favorite fishing spot in Burlington, Kansas.
CHARLIE RIEDEL/AP Aubrea Baker, with her daughter Haylen, visits her late husband’s favorite fishing spot in Burlington, Kansas.

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