More inside How the U.S. death toll compares to the numbers of Americans lost during the war.
COVID-19’s rate of 1,245 deaths per day quadruples that of the Second World War
In less than a year, more Americans have died of COVID-19 than died during World War II, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
In the 1,347 days from the attack on Pearl Harbor to V-J Day, 405,399 Americans died fighting in World War II, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. In less than a quarter of that time, at least 407,600 Americans have lost their lives to COVID-19.
These historic tragedies are connected solely by the scale of death and injuries — except for the few soldiers who fought in the war but lost their battle against the coronavirus and the few who survived both.
Still, looking at the two moments together perhaps helps us remember the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of young U.S. soldiers and recognize the serious threat posed by the coronavirus pandemic.
In recent weeks, COVID-19 deaths have risen so steadily that the rate of reported American deaths could be measured in seconds. An American died every 19 seconds on Jan. 12 – the only time the rate has fallen below 20 seconds.
That’s even faster than the death rate all the Allied forces soldiers suffered (a death every 20 seconds) on D-Day, June 6, 1944, when more than 4,400 soldiers died during the invasion.
Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, left 2,403 Americans dead. COVID-19 deaths have exceeded that toll nearly 30 times since Dec. 1.
Now that COVID-19 has supplanted World War II, this pandemic ranks as the third-deadliest event in U.S. history, behind the Civil War of 1861-1865 and the flu pandemic of 1918, also known as the Spanish flu.
Projections suggest that reaching or exceeding either milestone is unlikely, according to an update Jan. 15 by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
That said, the CDC announced Jan. 15 that any forecasts could be negated by the emergence of more contagious variants of the virus that could become the dominant strain in the USA by March. Conversely, the development of therapeutics might lessen the disease’s worst effects.
As 2021 begins with these unsettling statistics, the push continues for more daily vaccinations, more therapeutics and continued social distancing and mask use. The IHME forecasts new infections and subsequent deaths could begin declining within the next two weeks.