America’s Death Toll From COVID-19 Is Staggering—But Vaccines Continue to Bring Hope

Nearly half a million Americans have died from the pandemic.

Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes of Health on February 11, 2021.Oliver Contreras/CNP via ZUMA Wire

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

America has been battling the coronavirus pandemic for nearly a year, and as of Sunday, nearly half a million Americans have died from COVID-19. But there is good news as well: Vaccines are showing promise in slowing the spread of the virus. One major challenge facing President Joe Biden’s administration now is the equitable distribution of vaccines—not only in America, but around the world.

The official death count stood at 497,000 on Sunday morning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though officials estimate the actual count is likely higher. The toll is staggering: More Americans have died from COVID-19 than the number of American deaths in any armed conflict except the Civil War.  “It’s nothing like we’ve ever been through in the last 102 years since the 1918 influenza pandemic,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said on CNN on Sunday morning. That disease killed 625,000 Americans over two years, a record COVID-19 threatens to overcome if the spread of the virus is not controlled in the near-term.

But there are signs that the virus is getting under control. Cases in the United States are declining. After inheriting a vaccination distribution mess from the Trump administration, Biden’s team has scaled up vaccine production, and more than 61 million have been administered so far. In a series of television appearances on Sunday morning, Fauci reiterated Biden’s promise that the US will have more than enough doses to vaccinate every American adult by the end of the summer. He added it is “very likely” that people outside of the priority vaccination groups will be eligible for vaccines before then.

While effective vaccines promised to reduce the rate of infection and the severity of symptoms among those who contracted the virus, preliminary results from two studies in Israel found that the Pfizer vaccine also significantly reduces the rate of transmission. That encouraging finding begins to answer questions as to whether vaccinations could also slow the disease’s spread.

Although the Biden administration has emphasized the need for equitable distribution of vaccines, early CDC data show that Black Americans are underrepresented among those who have received the vaccine, while white Americans are slightly overrepresented.  Inequality extends beyond America’s borders: The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, predicted that the vaccine may not reach everyone in the world until 2024, and world leaders have criticized the U.S. of stockpiling the vaccine at the expense of the rest of the global community. (Last week, Biden pledged to give $4 billion over the next two years to international vaccination efforts.)

On Sunday, Fauci reiterated that mask-wearing will continue to be a crucial safety protocol for Americans to follow, possibly into 2022. “We will be approaching a degree of normality” this fall and winter, Fauci said. But, he added, “it really depends on what you mean by normality,” and named mask-wearing as a practice that may linger after schools and businesses return to more normal activity.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate