(AP) – It’s been just over a year since the first COVID death was recorded in the United States in February 2020.
A year later, our country has passed a grim and tragic milestone. More than 500,000 Americans have died from COVID-19.
The COVID death toll in the U.S. all but matches the number of Americans killed in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam combined.
The lives lost, as recorded by Johns Hopkins University, are about equal to the population of Kansas City, Missouri.
And despite the rollout of vaccines since mid-December, a closely watched model from the University of Washington projects more than 589,000 dead by June 1.
The U.S. toll is by far the highest reported in the world, and the true numbers are thought to be significantly greater, in part because of the many cases that were overlooked, especially early in the outbreak.
Such a milestone, over 500,000 deaths, once seemed unimaginable, but the virus has stretched into all corners of the country and impacted communities of every size and makeup.
“It’s very hard for me to imagine an American who doesn’t know someone who has died or have a family member who has died,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics at the University of Washington in Seattle. “We haven’t really fully understood how bad it is, how devastating it is, for all of us.”
The nation’s trauma continues to accrue in a way unparalleled in recent American life, said Donna Schuurman of the Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families in Portland, Oregon.
At other moments of epic loss, like the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Americans have pulled together to confront crisis and console survivors. But this time, the nation is deeply divided. Staggering numbers of families are dealing with death, serious illness and financial hardship. And many are left to cope in isolation, unable even to hold funerals.
“In a way, we’re all grieving,” said Schuurman, who has counseled the families of those killed in terrorist attacks, natural disasters and school shootings.
In recent weeks, virus deaths have fallen from more than 4,000 reported on some days in January to an average of fewer than 1,900 per day.
Still, at half a million, the death toll is akin to having a 9/11 every day for nearly six months.
The toll, accounting for 1-in-5 deaths reported worldwide, has far exceeded early projections, which assumed federal and state governments would marshal a comprehensive and sustained response and individual Americans would heed warnings.
Instead, a push to reopen the economy last spring and the refusal by many to maintain social distancing and wear facemasks fueled the spread.
