NBC News reports that one million Americans have now died from Covid. It’s hard to process. One million lives lost in this country.
As bad as this sounds, it’s actually worse. The alert just came across my phone.
The World Health Organization reports that almost three times as many people have died as the result of Covid than previously reported. A stunning number.
The WHO calls it “excess mortality figures. 14.9 million by the end of 2021.
Here’s how Reuters reports it: “The WHO’s excess mortality figures reflect people who died of COVID-19 as well as those who died as an indirect result of the outbreak, including people who could not access healthcare for other conditions when systems were overwhelmed during huge waves of infection. It also accounts for deaths averted during the pandemic, for example because of the lower risk of traffic accidents during lockdowns.”
Reuters goes on: “But the numbers are also far higher than the official tally because of deaths that were missed in countries without adequate reporting. Even pre-pandemic, around 6 in 10 deaths around the world were not registered, WHO said.”
Many countries just do not have adequate death reporting. This was going on even before the pandemic.
The WHO Covid report says that almost half of these uncounted deaths happened in India. It’s believed 4.7 million died during the pandemic. The Indian government puts its death toll far lower. 480,000.
Here’s my takeaway on this. Think about how much we lost in the last two years. So many lives lost. So much life too.
I think it’s going to be very hard to move on. Will we ever be back to the way things used to be? Will our kids get back all that time they lost?
We may never really know the actual death toll from Covid. We certainly won’t know the amount of other loss.
I know we want to put it away. Move on from Covid. After seeing these numbers, we can’t. We owe it to those we lost to remember.