Grim toll one year after the first infections in the United States

A year after a new coronavirus was identified as the cause of a mysterious pneumonia outbreak in China, SARS-CoV-2 has redefined life around the world, but nowhere has it been felt more keenly than ‘in the USA.

The United States was home to about one in four of the 97 million people infected worldwide – more than 24 million. And that represented one in five of the 2 million deaths worldwide from COVID-19, or more than 400,000 deaths.

The country has experienced more than twice as many coronavirus infections as India, whose 10.6 million cases are the second highest in the world in a country with four times the population. And deaths in the United States are almost double the 212,000 in Brazil, with the second-highest death toll in the world and roughly two-thirds of the American population.

How the hell did it get here?

“Something has really gone wrong here in the United States,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, Clinical Professor Emeritus of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program.

Public health agencies have been underfunded here for decades. The US federal government has a less direct role in public health than in many other countries, requiring significant leadership at the federal level to scale up and coordinate a response. And it didn’t come from Trump’s White House, Swartzberg said, the president often reinforcing skepticism of science.

The US experience of SARS and MERS, the new virus’s closest cousins, may also have made officials believe it would not erupt into a global health crisis. Although more deadly than the new virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome virus that first appeared in Asia in 2003 has only infected 8,098 people worldwide, of which 774 have died, according to the Centers for Disease Control. and Prevention in the United States. Most of the cases were in Asia, with only eight U.S. residents infected, none of whom died. Since 2004, no known cases of SARS have been reported anywhere in the world, the CDC said.

The deadly Middle East respiratory syndrome, first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, has since infected just over 2,200 people and killed 791, according to the World Health Organization. It was spread primarily through infected camels, and the CDC has only reported two cases in the United States, with both people surviving.

So, after the new coronavirus was identified with outbreaks in China a year ago, there has been resistance in the United States to treat it as a significant threat. Even after the first Bay Area cases, events like the Chinese New Year celebration in San Francisco and professional hockey and basketball games continued.

“No one wanted this pandemic to interfere with their lives,” Swartzberg said. “This is a great lesson for all of us – we need to respond more quickly.”

In mid-March last year, the Bay Area and California would emerge as national leaders in the fight against the virus, implementing the first coordinated regional, then statewide orders. . These actions came just weeks after the first documented case of community transmission of the virus.

But things were already worse than health officials feared. A 57-year-old woman from San Jose, who died at her home on February 6 after a short illness, was determined two and a half months later as the first American victim of the virus.

California’s early action has earned praise after the state averted huge, deadly spring epidemics like the one in New York City, where hospitals were overwhelmed. But the Golden State has come under fire for easing restrictions on businesses and activities too early last spring, leading to an upsurge in summer cases. And like most of the country, it has been hit hard by a spate of cases this winter.

Santa Clara County health official Dr. Sara Cody, who led the Bay Area in enacting the original stay-at-home order, said the region’s swift action and the The state had avoided a crush of infections early on when little was known about the treatment of COVID-19. Although California is currently experiencing some of the worst epidemics in the country, improvements in treatment have helped more infected people survive.

“Having a huge push in the fall compared to the spring when it was really new, we have experience taking care of COVID patients now, and in general, better outcomes,” Cody said.

A year after California reported some of the first infections in the United States, the more than 3 million cases in the state represent one in eight in the country. But even after some of the nation’s worst epidemics in recent months – nearly two-thirds of all COVID-19 cases in California and almost half of the state’s deaths have been reported since December 1 – the Golden State has performed better than others.

The per capita infection rate in the country’s most populous state is average, behind 23 other states, according to data compiled by the New York Times. The highest rates are found in sparsely populated North and South Dakota.

And the 35,000 deaths from COVID-19 in California, or about one in 12 deaths in the United States, is lower than the more than 41,000 deaths in New York, the highest number of any American state. New York, with half the population of California, ranked second in deaths by population among states, behind neighboring New Jersey, while California was in 39th, according to data from the New York Times.

The virus has been as much an economic disaster as it has been a health disaster, and experts say California has paid the price in lost jobs for its aggressive efforts to control outbreaks of the virus by curtailing business activity.

Nationally, even after a record-breaking $ 2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill last March and an additional $ 900 billion in relief last month, the United States lost nearly 10 million dollars. jobs since the pandemic hit, having recovered just 56% of those lost to lockdowns last spring.

The national unemployment rate, which was at a 50-year low of just 3.5% before the pandemic, was nearly double that of 6.7% in December after hitting 15% last spring. By comparison, the eurozone was at 8.3% in November, the latest figure available.

But California’s 9% unemployment rate in December is higher than the national average and that of other major states, including 8.2% in New York City, 7.2% in Texas and 6.1% in Florida. Michael Bernick, an employment attorney at law firm Duane Morris and former director of the state’s employment development department, said this was due to the Golden State blocking business activities more than d ‘other.

“California’s economic lockdowns have been tougher than those imposed by other states,” Bernick said. “States like Texas and Florida that haven’t seen such severe lockdowns have done better.”