B4
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MAY 17, 2022
US VIRUS
DEATHS HIT
1 MILLION
Matt Rourke/AP Photo
Sara Atkins holds a pillow with an image of her father, Andy Rotman-Zaid, who died of COVID-19 in December 2020.
By CARLA K. JOHNSON
Associated Press
The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 1 million on
Monday, a once-unimaginable fi gure that only hints at the
multitudes of loved ones and friends staggered by grief and
frustration.
The confi rmed number of dead is equivalent to a 9/11
attack every day for 336 days. It is roughly equal to how
many Americans died in the Civil War and World War II
combined. It’s as if Boston and Pittsburgh were wiped out.
“It is hard to imagine a million people plucked from this
E arth,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, who leads a new pandemic cen-
ter at the Brown University School of Public Health in Prov-
idence, Rhode Island. “It’s still happening and we are letting
it happen.”
Some of those left behind say they cannot return to nor-
mal. They replay their loved ones’ voicemail messages. Or
watch old videos to see them dance. When other people say
they are done with the virus, they bristle with anger or ache
in silence.
“’Normal.’ I hate that word,” said Julie Wallace, 55, of
Elyria, Ohio, who lost her husband to COVID-19 in 2020.
“All of us never get to go back to normal.”
Three out of every four deaths were people 65 and older.
More men died than women. White people made up most of
the deaths overall. But Black, Hispanic and Native Amer-
ican people have been roughly twice as likely to die from
COVID-19 as their white counterparts.
Most deaths happened in urban areas, but rural places
— where opposition to masks and vaccinations tends to run
high — paid a heavy price at times.
The death toll less than 2 1/2 years into the outbreak is
based on death certifi cate data compiled by the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health
Statistics. But the real number of lives lost to COVID-19,
either directly or indirectly, as a result the disruption of the
health care system in the world’s richest country, is believed
to be far higher.
The U.S. has the highest reported COVID-19 death toll of
any country, though health experts have long suspected that
the real number of deaths in places such as India, Brazil and
Russia is higher than the offi cial fi gures.
The milestone comes more than three months after the
U.S. reached 900,000 dead. The pace has slowed since a har-
rowing winter surge fueled by the omicron variant.
The U.S. is averaging about 300 COVID-19 deaths per
day, compared with a peak of about 3,400 a day in January
2021. New cases are on the rise again, climbing more than
60% in the past two weeks to an average of about 86,000 a
day — still well below the all-time high of over 800,000,
reached when the omicron variant was raging during the
winter.
The largest bell at Washington National Cathedral in the
nation’s capital tolled 1,000 times a week ago, once for every
1,000 deaths. President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered fl ags
lowered to half-staff until sunset on Monday and called each
life “an irreplaceable loss.”
“As a nation, we must not grow numb to such sorrow,” he
said in a statement. “To heal, we must remember.”
More than half the deaths occurred since vaccines became
available in December of 2020. Two-thirds of Americans
are fully vaccinated, and nearly half of them have had at
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‘WHAT WE NEED AS A NATION IS EMPATHY. OVER
TWO YEARS INTO THE PANDEMIC, WITH ALL THE CASES
AND LIVES LOST, WE SHOULD BE MORE COMPASSIONATE AND
RESPECTFUL WHEN TALKING ABOUT COVID. THOUSANDS OF
FAMILIES CHANGED FOREVER. THIS VIRUS IS NOT JUST A COLD.’
Tanya Alves | 35, of Weston, Florida, who lost her 24-year-old sister to COVID-19 in October
least one booster dose. But demand for the vaccine has
plummeted, and the campaign to put shots in arms has
been plagued by misinformation, distrust and political
polarization.
Unvaccinated people have a 10 times greater risk of
dying of COVID-19 than the fully vaccinated, according
to the CDC.
“To me, that is what is just so particularly heartbreak-
ing,” Nuzzo said. Vaccines are safe and greatly reduce the
likelihood of severe illness, she said. They “largely take
the possibility of death off the table.”
Angelina Proia, 36, of New York, lost her father to
COVID-19 in April 2020. She runs a support group for
grieving families on Facebook and has seen it divided
over vaccinations. She has booted people from the group
for spreading misinformation.
“I don’t want to hear conspiracy theories. I don’t want
to hear anti-science,” said Proia, who wishes her father
could have been vaccinated.
Sara Atkins, 42, of Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, chan-
nels her grief into fi ghting for global vaccination and bet-
ter access to health care to honor her father, Andy Rot-
man-Zaid, who died of COVID-19 in December 2020.
“My father gave me marching orders to end it and
make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Atkins said of the
pandemic. “He told me, ‘Politicize the hell out of my
death if I die of this.’”
Julie Wallace and her husband, Lewis Dunlap, had
cellphone numbers one digit apart. She continues paying
to keep his number. She calls it just to hear his voice.
“It’s just so important to hear that sometimes,” she
said. “It gives you a little bit of reassurance while also
tearing your heart out.”
Some have off ered solace in poetry. In Philadelphia,
poet and social worker Trapeta Mayson created a 24-hour
poetry hotline called Healing Verse. Traffi c to the Acad-
emy of American Poets’ poets.org website rose during the
pandemic.
Brian Sonia-Wallace, poet laureate of West Holly-
wood, California, has traveled the country writing poems
for hire. He imagines a memorial of a million poems,
written by people who don’t normally write poetry. They
would talk to those who are grieving and listen for points
of connection.
“What we need as a nation is empathy,” said Tanya
Alves, 35, of Weston, Florida, who lost her 24-year-old
sister to COVID-19 in October. “Over two years into the
pandemic, with all the cases and lives lost, we should be
more compassionate and respectful when talking about
COVID. Thousands of families changed forever. This
virus is not just a cold.”
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