COVID-19 in other countries

'More deadly than 9/11': US COVID-19 deaths hit record high

Most Americans will tell you; September 11, 2001 sits deep in their minds as one of the nation's darkest days.

It was the country's deadliest day in modern times.

It was the single deadliest terrorist attack in human history; 2,977 died.

Now, COVID-19 has trumped that grim marker, with more than 3,000 people dying with the disease on Wednesday (local time), according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University.

It will now likely become the yard stick society uses to rationalise the grief next time there's a human tragedy that kills on an industrial scale.

And while coronavirus is incomparable in many ways to the sudden toll from a terrorist attack on American soil, the slow-moving, invisible enemy is upending society in the same way terror has done.

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As mentioned in the article, deaths per day passed 3K for the first time in the US yesterday.

Their daily average deaths also passed the worst period April - so there are now more people dying per day on average than in the initial uncontrolled outbreak in the US.

 

Just to clarify, after looking at the numbers. That's the case if you take the cases just for the last week, and compare it to the average weekly death rates. It's not the case comparing total deaths by cause for a year vs total deaths for the year so far for Covid-19 (of course, there hasn't been a full year of Covid-19, and the rate has accelerated recently).

The stats I could find for mortality are from 2018 - CDC.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db355.htm

So comparing full year 2018 against total Covid-19 deaths for the year:


But then, comparing weekly rates against Covid-19 deaths for the last week:


That's 16,799 deaths for the last week. Equivalent to 875,000 deaths for the year.

 

Bearing in mind that there is an expectation of increased deaths resulting from Thanksgiving - there will be a lag for this.

 

A good point about the seasons. Even without vaccines, the winter is peak time for the virus, so my extrapolations are a bit far fetched.

But I think it's going to get worse for a little while before it gets better. Winter isn't quite at its peak yet, Christmas will bring a lot of people together, and the vaccine won't be widespread for a few months at least.

 

And two days ago, the number of deaths which took place yesterday would have broken yet another record.

The FDA has approved the vaccine now.

In a country where there's so much scepticism about the vaccine, it's a really confidence building exercise to threaten to fire people if they don't approve the vaccine.

 

I understand the vaccine will be free to people receiving the injection.

The Oxford vaccine allowed some dodgy data by mistake, it will take them a little longer to verify safety and effectiveness.

 

Yes, it was a mistake which is possibly effective. But that mistake needs to be tested properly - the sample size was too small to be significant according to the standard demanded of these sort of trials. It's promising, but not proven beyond doubt yet.

 

But they aren't doing quite as well now. There's something of a third wave, looking like Victoria's second wave a few months back. If that's not contained they could be in trouble.