Body count has long been the yardstick by which we measure calamity. There were the 1,496 souls who perished as the Titanic sunk, the approximately 6 million Jews killed during the Holocaust, the 58,000 U.S. lives lost in the Vietnam war. In the hours after the September 11 attacks, when the death toll was not yet known, then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani famously said, “The number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear, ultimately.”
We are, once again, trying to bear the unbearable, as the United States today surpassed 200,000 deaths caused by the still-rampaging COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. remains, as it has long been, the world’s hardest-hit country, with just 4% of the global population but roughly 21% of both deaths and overall cases.
It’s a dubious distinction that was fast in coming. It was not long ago, on Feb. 29, that the U.S.’s first virus death was recorded, in Washington state. By March 29, the death count had exceeded the 2,977 people who died in the 9/11 attacks. At that time, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted that total deaths would fall somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000.
The disease promptly set out to prove his prediction a tragic low-ball. On April 29, the Vietnam death toll was surpassed. On May 23, we reached 100,000 deaths. On July 29, it was 150,000. With the 200,000 threshold now crossed, the outlook for the rest of the year remains grim: The Institute for Health Metrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine now predicts a likely scenario of 410,000 deaths by year’s end.
History will be the ultimate judge of what kind of job the Trump Administration and the nation as a whole have done in responding to the pandemic. But with a vaccine still months away and the coming winter forcing many people back indoors—and into close, infectious quarters—the 400,000-plus figure is almost certain to be reached before the end of the year, with numbers equally certain to keep climbing after that. The final number of lives lost will, once again, be more than any of us can bear.
More than 31.3 million people around the world had been sickened by COVID-19 as of 12 p.m. E.T. today, and more than 964,000 people have died. Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
On Sept. 21, there were 298,908 new cases and 4,051 new deaths confirmed globally. Here's how the world as a whole is currently trending:
Here is every country with over 350,000 confirmed cases to date ("per cap" is number per 100,000 people):
Britons could be forgiven for feeling a case of pandemic whiplash. Just weeks ago, Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged the country to go back to work, while promising that life could return to near normal by Christmas. Now, not so much. With the U.K. experiencing a doubling of infections every seven days, including 4,300 new cases on Monday—the highest daily total since May—Johnson has ordered a new round of restrictions, including requiring pubs and restaurants to close from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in order to minimize mingling. Johnson warned the new rules could remain in place for six months, and could be tightened further if necessary.
Forget the cocktail parties, closed-door meetings and face-to-face schmoozing at this year’s United Nations General Assembly, which began today as an all-virtual gathering. First to address the assembly, by tradition, is Brazil—which volunteered for the lead-off spot at the first UNGA meeting in 1946 and, like New Hampshire in the U.S. primary campaign season, has retained the honor. Second up is the host country, which, as always, is the U.S. Both countries have been hit hard by the pandemic, and both of their presidents—Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump—have been criticized for downplaying the virus.
India’s 5.5 million coronavirus cases place it second in the world in infection count, behind only the U.S. But the comparatively weak Indian economy cannot weather a shutdown as well as the American one can, and in a move that is part symbolism and part desperation, the Taj Mahal is reopening to tourists and other visitors, Al Jazeera reports. The UNESCO heritage site made 860 million rupees ($1.6 million) in the 2018-2019 season—not much, but every little bit helps right now. Train routes and domestic flights, as well as restaurants and markets, have also been allowed to reopen as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government tries to balance public health and public wealth—a tricky business with no certain outcome.
The Situation in the U.S.
The U.S. had recorded more than 6.8 million coronavirus cases as of 12 p.m. E.T. today. More than 200,000 people have died. Here's where daily cases have risen or fallen over the last 14 days, shown in confirmed cases per 100,000 residents:
On Sept. 21, there were 52,070 new cases and 496 new deaths confirmed in the U.S. Here's how the country as a whole is currently trending:
It’s a good thing that children generally do not suffer from the coronavirus as severely as adults, because they’re likely to be the last group to have quick access to a vaccine if and when one becomes available. Trials so far have been conducted almost exclusively among adults, as The New York Times reports. That’s standard protocol, since children’s immune systems may be more unpredictably reactive to vaccines. Only if there are no serious side effects in adult subjects do researchers begin testing younger ones. The result: while adults may have access to a vaccine sometime in 2021, kids will have to wait longer for their turn.
Pour $3 trillion into the economy and some of it is bound to go astray. As The Washington Post reports, that's exactly what happened when $1 billion intended to help replenish the country’s supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) was instead spent by the Pentagon on developing jet engine parts, dress uniforms and body armor. The funds were appropriated under the Defense Production Act, which compels defense contractors to manufacture products that meet a particular national need in a particular time of crisis. In this case, that particular need—increased PPE—was not met.
Keeping a reliable count of new virus cases in K-12 schools would seem to be a top priority as officials determine whether it is safe for students to return to in-person learning. But as The New York Times reports, such tracking is alarmingly shoddy. Fifty different states and more than 13,000 different school districts mean all manner of different protocols, with some districts citing privacy issues that prevent publication of data and others simply not having the organizational wherewithal to do the counting in the first place. One independent group has counted 21,000 cases so far; whether that’s a reliable number is impossible to say.
All numbers unless otherwise specified are from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering, and are accurate as of September 22, 12 p.m. E.T. To see larger, interactive versions of these maps and charts, click here.
WHAT ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Protective Gloves Made in Sweatshop Conditions
Nearly two-thirds of the protective latex and synthetic gloves used in labs and hospitals worldwide are made in Malaysia. The pandemic has meant boom times for the companies that do the manufacturing—but hard times for the workers who are employed there, the Los Angeles Times reports. In some facilities, migrant laborers who came from Nepal, Bangladesh and elsewhere work in sweatshop conditions, logging 12-hour shifts six days a week while temperatures routinely hit 100° F. Read more here.
How Colleges Got Everything Wrong
More than 40,000 students, faculty and other employees of U.S. colleges and universities have tested positive for the coronavirus since schools began reopening last month. That comes after months of planning—that has clearly failed, as CNN reports. Among the key mistakes made along the way: expecting a radical change in college students’ hard-partying, risk-taking ways; inadequately preparing to quarantine ill students; and expecting university administrators to be able to juggle competing pressures from local governments, boards of directors, employees and interest groups like fraternities. Read more here.
Hats Off to Africa
As wealthy nations like the U.S. and the U.K. struggle to control their infection rates, Africa—which is ground zero for so many disease outbreaks—has proven itself a model of pandemic management. The continent of 1.3 billion people has just 1.4 million confirmed cases—or one quarter of the U.S. caseload despite having four times as many people. Much of the credit goes to John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who formed a 54-nation pan-African alliance to fight the pandemic. Read more here.
Do Face Shields Work? Supercomputer Says No
Plastic face shields seem like effective tools to prevent the spread of droplets and aerosols—and thus curb viral transmission—but a new simulation by a Japanese supercomputer says quite the opposite, per The Guardian. While modeling different size droplets, Fugaku, the world’s fastest supercomputer, found that 100% of those measuring 5 micrometers (or five millionths of a meter) escaped around the edges of a face shield, as did half of those measuring 50 micrometers. Read more here.
Thanks for reading. We hope you find the Coronavirus Brief newsletter to be a helpful tool to navigate this very complex situation, and welcome feedback at coronavirus.brief@time.com.
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Today's newsletter was written by Jeffrey Kluger and edited by Alex Fitzpatrick.
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