The U.S. death toll of those killed by Covid19 passed 100,000 today, according to The New York Times. Johns Hopkins’ tracker, which does not include U.S. deaths aboard cruise ships, placed the death toll at 99,783 on Wednesday.
The toll is short of the true total, say experts, but the milestone, arbitrary as it is, is a reminder of the severity and persistence of the coronavirus pandemic even as lockdowns are lifted.
The toll exceeds the number of U.S. military combat fatalities in every conflict since the Korean War. It matches the toll in the United States of the 1968 flu pandemic, and it is approaching the 116,000 killed in another flu outbreak a decade before that. The pandemic is on track to be the country’s deadliest public health disaster since the 1918 flu pandemic, in which about 675,000 Americans died. Though the numbers of new cases and deaths have begun trending downward, health experts warn of a possible resurgence as lockdowns are lifted.