Although it was five days ago that President Biden marked the deaths of 1 million Americans from COVID-19, it was only today that Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine made it official.
As of this writing, 1,000,167 Americans have died of COVID-19 out of 82,720,354 cases representing a mortality rate of 1.2%. However, many experts have concluded that 1 million deaths were surpassed "weeks or months ago."
Whenever that ominous figure was passed most Americans aren't giving much thought to a disease which has killed more Americans than any other disease or for that matter war or natural disaster in such a short period of time. It is true that COVID-19 is more manageable now than it was even at the start of 2022. Even as cases surge once more it has not been accompanied by a spike in hospitalizations as was the case following Delta last summer and fall and with Omicron late last year and early this year. At least for the moment.
While two out of every three Americans is fully vaccinated (66.98%) this puts us only slightly higher than Mongolia (66.36%) and slightly lower than Sri Lanka (67.55%). What if the United States had Canada's fully vaccinated rate of just under 82% (81.96%)? There are some estimates that at least 300,000 of these deaths were preventable.
In which case, we would not have been marking 1 million deaths in this country - at least not today. But millions of Americans have chosen not get vaccinated and for many of them it is now too late to change their minds. But it isn't too late for everyone.
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