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The United States has surpassed yet another devastating milestone in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic: 250,000 Americans have now died from the disease. That's more than twice the number of U.S. service members killed in World War I. Coronavirus case numbers are exploding across the country at the beginning of what is shaping up to be a difficult winter of illness in America. (Wamsley, 11/18)

From the start of the pandemic, public health officials and many political leaders hoped that covid’s frightening lethality — the death toll will hit 250,000 this week — might unite the country in common cause against the virus’s spread. But the nation’s deep divisions — political and cultural — as well as the virus’s concentrated impact on crowded urban areas in the early months, set the country on a different path. (Fisher, Jacobs and Kelley, 11/18)

In less than 10 months, Covid-19 has killed more people than strokes, suicides and car crashes typically do in a full year -- combined. The victims include an elderly father and his grown daughter who died within moments of each other. Two parents who died before their son's 5th birthday. In rare cases, even children with no known prior health conditions. Health experts say if Americans don't get more serious about wearing masks and avoiding careless socializing, the rate of deaths will keep soaring this fall and winter. (Yan and Wolfe, 11/18)

More than 3 million people in the United States have active coronavirus infections and are potentially contagious, according to a new estimate from infectious-disease experts tracking the pandemic. That number is significantly larger than the official case count, which is based solely on those who have tested positive for the virus. The vast — and rapidly growing — pool of coronavirus-infected people poses a daunting challenge to the governors and mayors in hard-hit communities who are trying to arrest the surge in cases. (Achenbach, 11/18)

The U.S. logged more than 170,000 newly reported Covid-19 cases for the second time, as the death toll crossed the quarter-million mark. The nation reported 170,161 new cases for Wednesday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, more than any day but Friday, when it reported 177,224 new cases. More than 11.5 million people in the country have been confirmed to have been infected with the coronavirus so far, Johns Hopkins data show. (Martin, 11/19)

U.S. officials recorded more than 1,300 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 among members of the armed forces on Tuesday, a new record for the military over a 24-hour period, CNN reported. Officials also told the network that the test positivity rate among the armed forces is now 6.8 percent, lower than the U.S. national average. (Bowden, 11/18)

Faced with skyrocketing new COVID-19 cases, multiple states are issuing new lockdown restrictions, closing common spaces like bars, restaurants, schools, and gyms. In response to about 50 U.S. states and territories witnessing record-breaking new COVID-19 cases, the White House Coronavirus Task Force issued candid remarks about the state of the nation, describing the “now aggressive, unrelenting, expanding broad community spread across the country, reaching most counties, without evidence of improvement but rather, further deterioration.” (Kelley, 11/18)

KHN: Take It From An Expert: Fauci’s Hierarchy Of Safety During COVID

Like many Americans, I take my signals from Dr. Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert and a member of the White House task force on the coronavirus. ... So I asked him how Americans might expect to live in the next six to nine months. How should we behave? And what should the next administration do? (Rosenthal, 11/19)

KHN’s ‘What The Health?’:  What Would Dr. Fauci Do?

On this special episode of KHN’s “What the Health?” podcast, Dr. Anthony Fauci sits down for an interview with KHN Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Rosenthal, a fellow physician. They explore the thorny political landscape and discuss how regular Americans should prepare to get through the coming months — as the pandemic surges and we wait for vaccines to become available. (11/19)