More COVID Deaths Recorded in U.S. in 2021 than 2020
Posted on 12/19/2021
The coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) gained major ground in the U.S. in late February 2020. At the time, there were no mRNA vaccines and then U.S. President Trump initiated Operation Warp Speed to enable pharma companies to develop treatments, which led to Moderna, Pfizer, and J&J getting their therapies out to the U.S. public. At the end of 2020, the CDC reported around 385,000 COVID deaths in the U.S.
COVID vaccines started being widely distributed in 2021 and at December 17, 2021, at least 241 million Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID shots, according to Our World in Data. However, despite U.S. people getting the COVID vaccines, the year-to-date 2021 COVID-19 deaths are at 421,000 (806k from John Hopkins data minus 385k).
Comparisons
Before SARS and coronavirus, the Spanish flu (1918 H1N1 flu pandemic) infected a third of the world’s population and killed as many as 50 million in the final years of World War I. According to the CDC, “It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.”
An unusual characteristic of this virus was the high death rate it caused among healthy adults 15 to 34 years of age compared to COVID-19, which has a far higher mortality rate for older populations.