Johns Hopkins University reported that as of Friday, more than 900,000 have died from COVID-19 in the United States.
The country met the grim milestone two years after the first cluster of the virus was reported in China.
Some of those who lost their lives include friends of Karen Howard, a Jacksonville resident.
“They were part of my world,” Howard said. “And my world’s gotten smaller with losing friends. I’m always scared when I get a phone call from someone I haven’t heard from in a while. And they give me bad news about that.”
She said the numbers from Johns Hopkins feel unreal.
News4JAX spoke with Dr. Mohammed Reza, an infectious disease expert, about the data.
“The reality is, we still don’t know a lot about the long-term effects of this virus,” he said.
Reza points to what he does know, such as data from the medical journal Pediatrics that says more than 200,000 children are without a parent or guardian because of COVID-19.
And, how the World Health Organization and the European CDC say nearly half a million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year.
“It is more than what we expected,” Reza said. “Data just became available that first six months of vaccine rollout that saved close to 240,000 million American lives being lost. That was prevented, along with a million hospitalizations that were prevented due to the vaccine rollout. I mean, the grim number that we’re looking at now is, is quite grim. But sadly, it could have been worse.”
And the death toll could get worse.
Some public health officials think we can reach 1 million deaths total by April.
The thought of this pains Howard, who is still mourning her friend’s loss.
“You just don’t know how bad it feels to lose a good friend when it could have been prevented,” Howard said.
Though it feels inevitable, Howard can only hope no one else experiences this.
Reza still encouraged those who haven’t been vaccinated to get vaccinated and boosted because it prevents hospitalizations and deaths.