The Coronavirus Death Toll Is Staggering

More than a thousand Americans are dying of COVID-19 each day.

Brian Branch Price/Zuma

The coronavirus is a rapidly developing news story, so some of the content in this article might be out of date. Check out our most recent coverage of the coronavirus crisis, and subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

On Friday, officials across the United States reported 1,354 new deaths from the coronavirus, bringing the total number of reported deaths in the United States, according to Johns Hopkins University’s Coronavirus Resource Center, to 161,367. The actual number of deaths, due to reporting issues, is likely to be much greater.

Friday’s death toll was not a daily record. It did not show a huge increase or drop. It was roughly the same as the reported weekday death toll for the last two weeks—this is just what normal is now, and as the surge in new cases across the Sun Belt over the last two months takes its toll, it is likely to be the new normal for quite a while.

In the last week, the death toll has surpassed the populations of Jackson, Mississippi, and Alexandria, Virginia. It’s greater than the populations of Springfield, Massachusetts, and Springfield, Illinois. (It will likely surpass the population of Springfield, Missouri, next week.) It’s greater than the populations of Manchester, New Hampshire; Fargo, North Dakota; and Macon, Georgia. It’s greater than the respective populations of Columbia and Charleston, South Carolina; Hartford and Bridgeport, Connecticut; Waco and Midland and Round Rock and Killeen and Pearland and Denton, Texas. Hayward and Pasadena and Berkeley and Lancaster, California;. It could fill the largest football stadium in the country, Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, one and a half times—it is also greater than the population of Ann Arbor. It is bigger than the largest city in eleven states.

“It looks like we’ll be at about a 60,000 mark, which is 40,000 less than the lowest number thought of,” President Donald Trump said in April. We passed that number in May and just kept going. Now, that many people have died in just three states—New York, New Jersey, and California.

There are days when the pandemic can sort of fade into the background of the political discourse. The president would prefer to talk about his beautiful boaters, Republican senators would prefer to talk about Antifa. But take a second today, perhaps, to read about some of the victims of the pandemic—check out the Twitter account Faces of Covid, which posts obituaries of the teachers and barbers and EMTs and siblings and spouses who are dying every day. It never went away. It is just what we live with now.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate