In the United States, the number of confirmed cases reached above 1.7 million people, killing more than 103,000 people so far.
COVID-19 has been disproportionately infecting communities of color, with African-Americans represent more than 13 of the population, according to the US Census Bureau. However, the black populations accounted for more than half of all COVID-19 cases, with almost 60% of deaths as of mid-April.
The US coronavirus victims also include more than 30 million Americans whose livelihoods disappeared in the most dramatic collapse in the nation’s economic history.
The United States has been plagued by the most mismanaged, and certainly the most politically divisive, coronavirus mitigation effort in the world.
Many experts have said that the death toll could have been lower if the government and the healthcare system had been ready.
William Haseltine, president of ACCESS Health International told CNN, “It didn’t have to happen if we had been prepared. It was totally predictable that another coronavirus was on its way. The mechanism exists, the stockpile, the drugs. There was a hole in our safety net.”
Infectious disease specialist Dr. William Schaffner of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center said we need to continue practicing social distancing for some time to prevent many more deaths.
“I’m in deep mourning as a person. I’m in deep mourning as a clinician, and also as a person who works in public health,” Dr. Schaffner said. “Many of these deaths could have been prevented, but going forward, we want to prevent many, many more deaths, right?”
Some experts say that the federal government delayed the lockdown measures. President Donald Trump spent the time between late January and announced “15 days to slow the spread” initiative in mid-March in denial, floating misinformation about the coronavirus.
On January 22, Trump said, “We have it totally under control.” In February, he said, “We pretty much shut it down coming from China.” However, concerns were already rising in the US public health community.
On February 25, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC, warned that disruptions to daily life in the United States could be “severe.”
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington has predicted that the US death toll could reach up to 132,000 by August, amid signs that widespread wearing of facemasks has been helping reduce the infections. Still, the wearing of facemasks has become a hot political debate with Trump clearly refusing to wear one in public, with his presumptive 2020 opponent Joe Biden calling him a “fool” for taking such stance.
