The USA has 3 million documented cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, a virulent bug that crawled into the national consciousness early in the year and is likely to consume the rest of it.
The grim milestone reached Wednesday represents roughly a quarter of the world’s cases and the same percentage of its deaths.
Though many Americans may be numb to the growing coronavirus toll, avoiding the reality will probably make matters worse.
Consider these statistics: It took the USA a little more than three months to hit 1 million cases on April 28. It took about half that time, 44 days, to get to 2 million on June 11 and only 26 days to reach 3 million on July 8. By that gauge, if no new measures are taken, 4 million cases could be tallied as soon as July 22.
The USA leads an unenviable group. Its 3 million cases for a nation of 330 million beats out Brazil’s 1.7 million cases (210 million population), India’s 742,000 cases (1.4 billion) and Russia’s 699,000 cases (145 million), according to statistics compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The U.S. figure dwarfs the 85,000 cases in China, where the virus is thought to have originated. Even allowing for potential underreporting by Chinese authorities, China’s 1.4 billion people make its per capita infection rate one in 16,000. Here, one in every 110 Americans has tested positive for the virus.
After reaching the 3 million mark in record time, a few elected officials seem ready to slow the pace of business reopenings. Others, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, remain steadfast in their desire to prioritize the economy in a politically charged climate that has turned masks into a divisive symbol.
One reason could be that the number of those killed by the virus – 131,000 – hasn’t spiked, confounding scientists and encouraging those opposed to renewed shutdowns, including President Donald Trump, who insisted schools fully reopen in the fall despite the growing number of cases.
COVID-19 deaths long ago rocketed past annual suicides (47,000), common flu (55,000), diabetes (83,000) and Alzheimer’s disease (121,000) and is fast coming up on strokes (146,000). Those are the U.S. figures for an average year. The virus has done its damage in less than half that time.
“Like a runner coming from behind in a macabre race, it has surpassed the death toll of many diseases so many Americans consider important,” says Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. “People may get numb to the numbers, until it strikes someone near them.”
Another problem, Woolf says, is the delayed and sometimes nonexistent impact of the virus.
“Human beings are used to learning from their behaviors with the immediate response. You touch a hot stove, and you get the results right away,” he says. “With this, the people going out and partying and going to the beach and so forth all occurs weeks before the hospitalizations start increasing, so there’s less opportunity for society to learn their lesson from some of these behaviors.”
Death may be the only motivating factor capable of changing U.S. hygiene habits and reopening plans, says Carolyn Marvin, Frances Yates emeritus professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. /USA Today
