Two More Depressing COVID19 Milestones
On January 21, 2020, the first COVID19 case was confirmed in the United States. The first COVID19 death in the U.S. occurred on February 6, 2020. During the ensuing 23 months, the United States has continued to scale new COVID19 milestones.
On December 12, 2021, the United States passed the mortality milestone of 800,00 COVID19 deaths. The actual number was 818,750 deaths. The mortality rate is once again accelerating. It took 111 days to increase from 600,000 to 700,000 deaths but only 73 days to increase from 700,000 to 800,000.
The US had more COVID19 deaths in 2021 than in 2020 due to the more contagious Delta variant and people refusing to be vaccinated. The ten states with the highest number of deaths per capita, in descending order, were Oklahoma, West Virginia, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Kentucky, Georgia, South Carolina, Wyoming, and Missouri. Johns Hopkins COVID19 tracker reported 2,171 new COVID19 deaths on December 18, 2021.
The United States has the highest number of reported total COVID19 deaths in the world, followed by Brazil and India. The US accounts for 4% of the world's population, but 14% of all reported COVID19 deaths. Among the Group of Seven (G7) wealthiest nations, the US ranks worst in terms of per capita deaths from COVID19 in 2021. Among the 38 members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United States ranks 30th. Only Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia Colombia, Poland, and Slovenia had more COVID19 deaths per capita.
The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington has predicted the United States will reach 1 million deaths by the first quarter of 2022.
On December 13, CDC reported that 75% of US residents who had died of COVID19 illness were age 65 or older. One out of every 100 older Americans has succumbed to the disease. COVID19 has become the third leading cause of death among Americans 65 and older, after heart disease and cancer.
On December 13, the United States passed another milestone of 50 million confirmed COVID19 cases since the beginning of the pandemic. According to John Hopkins COVID19 tracker there had been 50,210,571 cumulative cases.
The number of days to reach each milestone of 10 million cases is summarized below.
- 1 to 10 million: 288 days
- 10 to 20 million: 54 days
- 20 to 30 million: 85 days
- 30 to 40 million: 162 days
- 40 to 50 million: 100 days
Johns Hopkins COVID19 tracker reported 193,305 new confirmed COVID19 cases on December 18. After almost two years, the pandemic is clearly heading in the wrong direction.
