Flags were lowered to half-staff as President Joe Biden commemorated the "tragic milestone" of 1,000,000 lives being lost to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. PBS reports that, while the official estimate of lives lost globally is 6.2 million, the World Health Organization estimates the real toll to be 15,000,000 lives lost directly or indirectly due to COVID-19.
"Today we mark a tragic milestone here in the United States. One million COVID deaths. One million empty chairs around the family dinner table. Each irreplaceable. Irreplaceable losses. Each leaving behind a family, a community forever changed because of this pandemic. We all must do more. We must honor those we have lost by doing everything that we can to prevent as many deaths as possible." (President Joe Biden)
Statistics by world regions and countries can be found on the World Health Organizations website where their COVID Dashboard is updated frequently.
"It's terribly tragic. The idea of one million deaths in an outbreak that is historic in nature - we've had nothing like this in well over 104 years. One of the parts which adds to the tragedy, is that many of those deaths were avoidable. Avoidable if people had been vaccinated. It's estimated that if people had been vaccinated to a much greater extent right now, that vaccines would have avoided at least a quarter of those deaths...about 250,000." (Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the President)
The PBS NewsHour pointed out that there was no day of national mourning for this dark milestone and asked what more the administration could be doing in response to COVID-19. Fauci listed the efforts being made and attempted to clarify messaging from the White House.
Republicans and Democrats are currently debating more funding for COVID relief.
Comments / 12