The New York Times documents the loss of one million American lives to a preventable disease, and how we as a country got here in our Sunday Long Read.
THE MAGNITUDE OF THE country’s loss is nearly impossible to grasp.
More Americans have died of Covid-19 than in two decades of car crashes or on battlefields in all of the country’s wars combined.
Experts say deaths were all but inevitable from a new virus of such severity and transmissibility. Yet, one million dead is a stunning toll, even for a country the size of the United States, and the true number is almost certainly higher because of undercounting.
It is the result of many factors, including elected officials who played down the threat posed by the coronavirus and resisted safety measures; a decentralized, overburdened health care system that struggled with testing, tracing and treatment; and lower vaccination and booster rates than other rich countries, partly the result of widespread mistrust and resistance fanned by right-wing media and politicians.
The virus did not claim lives evenly, or randomly. The New York Times analyzed 25 months of data on deaths during the pandemic and found that some demographic groups, occupations and communities were far more vulnerable than others. A significant proportion of the nation’s oldest residents died, making up about three-quarters of the total deaths. And among younger adults across the nation, Black and Hispanic people died at much higher rates than white people.
Understanding the toll — who makes up the one million and how the country failed them — is essential as the pandemic continues. More than 300 people are still dying of Covid every day.
“We are a country with the best doctors in the world, we got a vaccine in an astoundingly short period of time, and yet we’ve had so many deaths,” said Mary T. Bassett, the health commissioner for New York State.
“It really should be a moment for us all to reflect on what sort of society we want to have,” she added.
The society that we apparently want to have is one where 100,000 deaths to COVID was heart-rending, and a million deaths are the price we pay to move on from lockdowns, mask regulations, and vaccine requirements.
It's a society that has deliberately undercounted the deaths by maybe 50, maybe 100%, and we do everything to pretend the pandemic is over.
It's a society that will tolerate the deaths of hundreds of thousands, millions more, and ignore the debilitation of millions, tens of millions due to Long COVID symptoms.
It's the most selfish, amoral society in human history, I would think.
That really does describe America in 2022, doesn't it?
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