The Counterpoint is a newsletter that uses both analytic and holistic thinking to examine the wider world. My goal is that you find it ‘worth reading’ rather than it necessarily ‘being right.’ Expect regular updates on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic as well as essays on a variety of topics. I appreciate any and all sharing or subscriptions.
On March 17, 2020, San Francisco and the other Bay Area counties began to shelter-in-place, becoming the first major metropolitan area to do so. Nationally, it was also the day of the 100th confirmed death from COVID-19 within the United States.
As of this evening, there have been 537,922 confirmed deaths nationally, a number that at this time last year, most would’ve thought inconceivable. The American Civil War, literally Americans shooting at each other with lead bullets, minimal sanitation, and no antibiotics, claimed ~655,000 lives over four years. Over 1,471 Americans have died from COVID-19 each and every day of the past year.
Yet statistics do not begin to capture the damage. Grief is not a static event, but a process that plays out over months and years. There are millions of people, hundreds of thousands of families, that are grieving right now. If your family is one of them, know you are not alone. If your family is unscathed, pause to acknowledge how a single, random exhale from someone could’ve changed everything.
I hope that we as a nation learn many things from this pandemic, because it was neither the first nor will it be the last. Perhaps the most long-lasting will be the applicability of mRNA vaccine technology to diseases previously thought not possible.
But setting aside the science, I hope that maybe we will all be just a little more kind to each other. “We’re all fighting a hard battle,” as the saying goes. The world is a brutal enough place already; 537,922 Americans learned this the hard way. We don’t need to add to that brutality.
Cumulative US Deaths
Daily US Deaths
