A customer walks past a sign indicating that the COVID-19 vaccine is not yet available at Walgreens in Long Beach, Calif. | Ashley Landis / AP
The year 2020 ended with December as the deadliest and most infectious month of the coronavirus pandemic, with the U.S. surpassing 20 million confirmed cases and almost certainly many more.
More than 77,000 people died of COVID-19 in the United States in December, with at least 6.4 million new infections, complicated by the emergence of a mutant virus and a vaccine process that is going on at a snail’s pace. The vaccination process is so bad that even many developing countries are far ahead of the US in the uptake of their vaccines.
As Americans defy this grim news, even major media outlets, including NBC, have reported that life in China and other countries is going back to normal for a vast majority of people in those countries.
Back in April, many thought things could not be much worse in America. People watched TV in horror while the sick and dying people filled New York hospitals and as cooling morgues popped up in front of them to remove the dead. December figures of 77,000 deaths, however, surpass the 58,000 killed by the virus in April, which is now officially the second deadliest month of the pandemic in the United States .
On the last day of the year alone, December 31, at least 227,651 new cases were reported, and 3,451 people died.
The virus has now officially killed 346,000 people in the U.S. with the true figure likely to be much higher.
At least four cases of a new mutant strain of the virus have been reported in Colorado, California, and Florida. Dr Mercedes Carnethon, vice-chair of medicine at Northwestern University, said experts were “very confident that this variation is now everywhere.”
The mutant virus appears to be “affecting more adults under the age of 20,” Carnethon told MSNBC. “And I think the reason that’s particularly crucial is that this younger number of adults is circulating more. They perform some of the essential functions such as delivery work, factory work, and they are usually out there in the population, and that population is not going to get the vaccine that soon. ”
At this stage, it is certain that these vulnerable young people will not be vaccinated anytime soon, as only about 2.8 million people have been vaccinated since the vaccination campaign began in mid – December. According to mid-December promises about the Trump administration, about 20 million or more should have been vaccinated by the end of the year.
States say they are motivated by a shortage of workers and money. Even more problematic is the lack of infrastructure of the private health care system in the U.S. to accommodate what is being done in developed and developing countries around the world. Countries with single payment systems and national health care everywhere are overtaking the U.S., which relies on clothing like CVS and Walgreens to make the public health care system much more efficient.
In 1947, the public health care system in New York City vaccinated the majority of that city’s population against smallpox in less than six weeks. That system has long been dismantled.
Even with vaccines available, they are useless without the infrastructure to deliver them to humans. Further increases are expected in the weeks following Christmas and the New Year holidays.
The crisis is escalating across the country. In California, hospitals have gone up more than eightfold in two months and nearly tenfold in Los Angeles County. Because hospitals are soft and intensive care units do not have more beds for COVID-19 patients, collection wards are being set up in tents, spaces and classrooms to make up for the lack of space in occupied hospitals. surrender.
On Thursday, the total number of California deaths exceeded 25,000, making it the third state to cross that milestone, along with New York and Texas.
“The heartbreak is that if we hadn’t done a better job of reducing the spread of the virus, many of these deaths would not have occurred,” said Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County’s director of public health, who has advocating with people not coming together and worse spreading them.
President Joe Biden said this week that a completely new and major effort will be undertaken under his leadership, including an attack on the Defense Representation Act, to help build the infrastructure necessary to deliver 100 million vaccines in the first 100 days of its administration.
AP contributed to this article.
CONTINUED
