“一個被痛苦和損失麻痹的國家，如今不得不面對一個令人震驚的數字：50萬……除美國外，沒有哪個國家有這麼多人死于流行病。”
當地時間2月21日，在美國新冠死亡病例逼近50萬關頭，紐約時報用50萬個黑點，鋪滿了頭版一半的版面。
在這張密密麻麻的“點”圖上，每一個黑點都代表着一名逝者。它以5萬例為一個區間分布，随着時間的推移，黑點越來越密集，這也意味着美國死亡病例的增長速度在不斷加快。到了2021年1月，區間幾乎成為黑色的色塊，讓人觸目驚心。
自2020年2月美國出現首例已知的新冠病毒死亡病例以來，至今已有近50萬美國群眾因新冠喪生。在當天《紐約時報》的報道中，華盛頓大學流行病學家阿裡•莫克達德博士稱，不到一年的時間裡，死于新冠的美國人數已經超過了該國在一戰、二戰和越南戰争陣亡人數的總和。
而據美國華盛頓大學健康名額與評估研究所的預測資料，到今年6月1日，也就是不到一百天内，預計還将有9.1萬美國群眾染疫不治。
"Our grandchildren and future generations will look back at us and blame us for the biggest failure in facing a pandemic in a country that's the richest country in the world. That we allowed people to die, that we didn't protect our vulnerable populations – Native American, Hispanic and African Americans. That we did not protect our essential workers," Dr. Ali Mokdad, a public health researcher at the University of Washington, told the Strait Times when U.S.'s COVID-19 death toll passed the half-million milestone on Monday.
A somewhat fading grayish column appeared on the front page of the New York Times on Sunday morning as a visual representation of the "biggest failure" – half a million Americans died within a year.
A year into the pandemic, the running total of lives lost was about 502,000 as of Wednesday – roughly the population of Kansas City, Missouri, and just shy of the size of Atlanta. The figure compiled by Johns Hopkins University surpasses the number of people who died in 2019 of chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke, Alzheimer's, flu, and pneumonia combined.
Despite efforts to administer coronavirus vaccines, a widely cited model by the University of Washington projects the U.S. death toll will surpass 589,000 by June 1.
實際上，去年5月美國新冠死亡人數達10萬例時，《紐約時報》就曾用整個頭版羅列其中1000名新冠肺炎死者的身份，并稱之為“美國無法計算的損失”。
然而，沉浸在悲傷中的人們沒有想到，痛苦和死亡仍未結束，疫情還在繼續失控。據美國約翰斯•霍普金斯大學網站資料顯示，截至目前，美國累計确診新冠病例超2818萬，累計死亡病例超50萬例。
對此，傳染病專家福奇在周日接受媒體采訪也感慨道，這與1918年流感大流行至今100多年所經曆的情況完全不同，這場大流行病無疑是“毀滅性的”。
盡管該統計結果是根據世界各地政府機構提供資料所得出的，但由于早期對病毒了解不深，且當時的檢測手段有限，實際死亡人數被認為要比目前公布數字高得多。
對于接下來的疫情前景，福奇并不樂觀，到2022年美國人仍需戴口罩的可能性仍然存在， “從現在開始的幾十年後，人們還會談論這場疫情。”
Nine months ago, on May 24, 2020, the New York Times published a cover page with all the basic information of the 10,000 people who had died from the coronavirus then. As shocking as the image was, it didn't help stop the relentless march of death and tragedy.
"It's nothing like we have ever been through in the last 102 years, since the 1918 influenza pandemic," the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, said on CNN's State of the Union.
While the count is based on figures supplied by government agencies around the world, the real death toll is believed to be significantly higher, in part because of inadequate testing and cases inaccurately attributed to other causes early on.
"People will be talking about this decades and decades and decades from now," Fauci said on NBC's Meet The Press.