Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
As Once-Unthinkable Death Toll Nears, Our Brains Literally Cannot Fathom It
Slightly more than two years after recording its first Covid-19 death, the U.S. is about to cross a once-unthinkable threshold: one million deaths attributed to the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Covid-19 mortality count鈥攐ver 990,000 and still rising鈥攊s reflected in death certificates recorded by the CDC. Of these certificates, at least 90% list Covid-19 as the underlying cause of death, the CDC said. The remainder list the disease as a contributing cause. (Kamp, Stamm and Bentley, 4/25)
As of 6:45 a.m. EDT Monday, cumulative coronavirus deaths in the U.S. totaled 991,254 鈥 more than any other country, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Brazil had the second-highest number of deaths with 662,891, followed by India with 522,223, Russia with 367,521 and Mexico with 324,129. (Ewing, 4/25)
As of April 2022, there have been nearly 1 million confirmed COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. For most people, visualizing what a million of anything looks like is an impossible task. The human brain just isn鈥檛 built to comprehend such large numbers. We are two neuroscientists who study the processes of learning and numerical cognition 鈥 how people use and understand numbers. While there is still much to discover about the mathematical abilities of the human brain, one thing is certain: People are terrible at processing large numbers. (Hasak and Toomarian, 4/7)
Also 鈥
Just 10 years old at the time, it was as if Eva Torres鈥檚 world fell in when COVID claimed the life of her grandmother in April 2020. Abuela, as the girl called her, had lived just a block from the Bronx apartment she shared with her parents and two older brothers. Grandma was the one who would pick her up from school each day and 鈥渉ear her 10,000 stories,鈥 said Eva鈥檚 mother Angela Torres, 鈥渆ven if she was repeating it for the 20th time.鈥 After Eva鈥檚 grandmother passed, the elder Torres watched her daughter鈥檚 grades slip. Her once-bubbly girl seemed withdrawn, weighed down by anxiety. 鈥淸That kind of loss,] it鈥檚 something that you carry with you,鈥 the mother told The 74. 鈥淚t permeates into your very soul.鈥 (Lehrer-Small, 4/24)
The U.S. is nearing 1 million COVID-19 deaths, a record that is likely undercounted as it is, due to missed early infections and the advent of at-home testing in the last few months.聽Data from the months since vaccination was made broadly available in the nation has consistently shown those who are vaccinated are far less likely to come down with serious cases of COVID-19, according to a report by The Washington Post. And a new analysis from the Peterson Center on Healthcare and Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) quantifies the effects of vaccination, estimating that more than 234,000 unvaccinated Americans died who could have lived had they had their vaccine.聽This was particularly true during the Delta surge in late 2021, most of the deaths each month could have been prevented with vaccination, according to an analysis by Peterson and KFF.聽(Baldwin, 4/22)