TAMPA, Fla. — The full picture of the COVID-19 pandemic will take decades to fully sort out, but we can see the grim number of deaths in real-time and it's about to cross over another threshold once thought too high to reach.
As of November 22, the United States had reported 771,118 deaths from COVID-19, according to the latest numbers from Johns Hopkins University. Over the past month, nearly 34,000 Americans died from COVID-19, putting the daily average at a little more than 1,100 deaths per day. (Total/30 days)
There are currently 39 days left in 2021. If the current daily average of deaths remains, the United States will pass 800,000 deaths from COVID-19 around December 19.
Additionally, by the time the calendar rolls over to 2022, there will be an additional 42,000+ deaths. That would put the overall total of deaths in the United States from COVID-19 at more than 813,000.
Put another way, the total number of U.S. deaths from COVID-19 would fill all of the seats at Tampa's Raymond James Stadium 12 times over.
Projected out further, the University of Washington is estimating more than 880,000 U.S. COVID-19 deaths by March 1, 2022. That would be just 10 days short of the two-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020.
Looking deeper at the numbers, the United States has nearly equaled the total number COVID-19 deaths in 2021 than were seen in 2020 [384,760 (2021) vs. 385,343 (2020)]. This has come despite the widespread availability of several COVID-19 vaccines. But, the vaccines have been refused by tens of millions of Americans and the deaths from COVID-19 haven't slowed down as new variants emerged and wreaked havoc.
Still, many Americans have begun to resume normal activities with less concern over COVID-19. Recently in the U.S., the overall number of COVID-19 cases was declining in mid-to-late September. However, the case numbers have started trending up again. Last week, 29 states told the CDC they saw an increase in the number of cases week-over-week.