A few charts describe the situation in the United States as we approach the second anniversary of the first reports of a novel pneumonia in Wuhan. First, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) dashboard, with American figures highlighted:

Note the 28-day numbers: in themselves, they reflect a medical disaster, but they're just the cases and deaths reported in the last four weeks. All told, 700,000 dead Americans reflect a greater toll than the US suffered in the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, or in the Civil War.
Some charts from
Our World in Data give us some perspective, but not much consolation. First, new cases:
While the count is falling, it's still well over 100,000 a day.
Daily deaths are just beginning to drop, to roughly 1,900 a day—far better than the awful spike last winter, but still bad. So is the count of vaccination doses:
The Americans, and the world, will be a long time in understanding why a rich, powerful nation succumbed so badly to COVID-19, when it should have led the world in an effective response.
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