The virus has reached every corner of America, destroying dense cities and counties alike, with waves flowing through one region and then another.
In New York City, more than 28,000 people have died from the virus – or about one in 295 people. In Los Angeles County, the toll is roughly one in every 500 people. In Lamb County, Texas, where 13,000 people live in an area of 1,000 square miles, the loss is one in 163 people.
The virus has permeated nursing homes and other long-term care facilities and spread easily among vulnerable residents: they are responsible for it more than 163,000 deathsabout a third of the country’s total population.
Virus deaths also have Americans disproportionately affected according to racist criteria. Overall the Death rate According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of black Americans with Covid-19 was almost twice that of white Americans. The death rate for Hispanics was 2.3 times higher than for white Americans. And for Indians it was 2.4 times higher.
As of Monday, an average of 1,900 Covid deaths had been reported on most days – after more than 3,300 peak points in January. The slowdown came as a relief, but scientists said variants make it difficult to project the future of the pandemic, and historians warned against turning away from the scale of the country’s losses.
“There will be a real urge to say, ‘See how well we’re doing,” said Nancy Bristow, chair of the history department at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. And author of American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic. ”But she now warned of tendencies to“ rewrite this story into another story of American triumph ”.
