The number of deaths caused by the coronavirus in the United States surpassed 400,000 on Tuesday, in the last hours in the post of President Donald Trump, whose treatment of the crisis was considered by public health experts a singular failure.
The continuing total of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is almost equal to the number of Americans killed in World II. It is about the population of Tulsa, Oklahoma; Tampa, Florida; or New Orleans. It is equivalent to the sea of humanity that was in Woodstock in 1969.
It is little less than the estimated 409,000 Americans who died in 2019 of strokes, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, flu and pneumonia combined.
And the virus did not wipe out the United States at all, even with the arrival of vaccines that could finally end the outbreak: a model widely cited by the University of Washington projects that the death toll will reach almost 567,000 on May 1.
While the Trump administration was credited with Operation Warp Speed, the impact program to develop and distribute coronavirus vaccines, Trump repeatedly minimized the threat, mocked the masks, criticized blockages, promoted unproven and unsafe treatments, harmed scientific experts and expressed little compassion for the victims.
Even his own fight with COVID-19 did not seem to have changed.
The White House defended the government.
“We regret every life lost due to this pandemic and, thanks to the president’s leadership, Operation Warp Speed led to the development of several safe and effective vaccines in record time, something that many said would never happen,” said the spokesman. White House Judd Deere.
President-elect Joe Biden takes office on Wednesday.
The nation reached the 400,000 milestone in just under a year. The first known deaths from the virus in the U.S. occurred in early February 2020, both in Santa Clara County, California.
Although the count is based on figures provided by government agencies around the world, the actual death toll is believed to be significantly higher, in part due to inadequate testing and inaccurately attributed cases to other causes at the outset.
It took four months to reach the first 100,000 dead. It took just over a month to go from 300,000 to 400,000.