These are exhilarating times for optimists about the coronavirus pandemic, what with cases finally dropping to lows not seen in months, hospitalizations in major decline, and deaths falling sharply. Public health measures targeted to protect people from infection are lifting, pronto, and the nation is opening apace.
Normality, however, isn’t exactly rushing in. And the toll of the pandemic — which rages across the globe — is still unfolding, as the Wall Street Journal reported:
“Deaths from the Covid-19 pandemic are causing an extraordinary jolt in the U.S., inflating the nation’s death rate to the highest level seen in nearly two decades. Whether the U.S. will quickly snap back to pre-pandemic levels following a mass-vaccination effort remains to be seen. Daily Covid-19 deaths are on their way back down, but the disease is unlikely to disappear, and health experts say there could also be long-running effects from issues like missed cancer screenings, a surging rate of drug overdoses and health inequities exacerbated by the pandemic … The U.S.’s age-adjusted mortality rate shot up by about 16% in 2020 from the year before, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, marking the highest point since 2003. This also broke a 90-year streak in which the yearly death rate was always lower than it was 10 years earlier.”