Perspective on COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.

Memorial service for the victims of COVID-19

What does it mean, more than a million people dying from COVID-19 in the U.S.?

As the pandemic was progressing in the early months of 2020, I struggled to comprehend the scope of the deaths it was causing, so I created this page in order to gain some perspective.

In your mind's eye, imagine one person dying—someone's mother, father, wife, husband, partner, daughter, son, grandmother, grandfather, sibling—mostly alone in a sterile Intensive Care Unit, separated from the people and life they cherish, struggling to do something we usually take for granted: to simply breathe.

Now picture this person's death,
the hole it leaves in the lives
of grieving loved ones.

These are our family members and friends,
our coworkers, acquaintances, and neighbors.

Can you imagine 10 such losses?

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100?

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1,000?

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During the first year of the pandemic,
it was almost unimaginable
that our losses in the U.S. alone
would one day exceed one million.

However, as of mid-May 2022,
two years and three months
after the first death was reported,
our losses did exceed one million,
according to the
Johns Hopkins University
COVID-19 Dashboard⩘ .

These are holes
in the very hearts and souls
of our families and communities.

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The first publicly announced death in the U.S. from COVID-19 occurred on February 19, 2020 in Seattle, which went on to briefly became the first epicenter when the virus swept through nursing homes there.

(Months later, posthumous testing on autopsy samples revealed that the actual first death in the U.S. known to be from COVID-19 occurred in Santa Clara County, California more than three weeks earlier on February 6, 2020. The person died at their home before testing was widely available.)

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