The United States suffered the deaths of just 500,000 Covid-19s.Americans are now facing a serious pandemic crossroads

A nightmare of this scale seemed immeasurable just a year ago.

The lives of 500,000 Americans have been lost to Covid-19.It’s more than a number Americans killed in World War II..

The victims of this silent encounter, young and old, pervaded every corner of the country.

And the pandemic isn’t over yet. But Americans can change their course — and help prevent more families from suffering miserable sorrow.

According to Johns Hopkins University, more than 500,000 people in the United States have died of the disease.

Dr. Rochelle Warrensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, advertised a number of encouragements earlier on Monday for new cases, deaths, and reduced hospitalizations, but also provided a note of caution.

The 7-day average of daily reported deaths is the lowest since the beginning of December.

“The seven-day average is commensurate with the harsh reality of surpassing 500,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States this week. This really is the hugeness of this pandemic and the losses it has caused us. It reminds me tragically. Personal life and our community, “Walensky said. “The pandemic is heading in the right direction, but there’s still a lot to do.”

However, as the number of new cases and hospitalizations decreases, Highly contagious variants Go up.

“I’m worried about this variant — B.1.1.7 variant (First discovered in the UK), “said Dr. Peter Hotez, director of national tropical medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

“When it’s taken over, the numbers start to skyrocket again. If we can’t vaccinate before that, there’s no end to what the death toll would look like.”

But as the number of vaccinations grows slowly, some Americans say they don’t get the Covid-19 vaccine — Hurts the potential for herd immunity And it hinders the return to normal life.

Vaccination position

According to the report, more than 44.1 million Americans have been vaccinated twice at least once. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 19.4 million people are fully vaccinated. This is about 5.9% of the US population, Estimated 70% to 85% Of Americans who need immunity to reach Herd immunity..

Some states are still working on vaccine delays after serious The weather hit most of the country last week.

But the United States is likely to catch up by mid-week, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“Obviously it’s a setback because we want to see a stable stream of vaccines in people’s arms, but we can catch up pretty well,” Forch told NBC on Sunday.

Some experts have suggested to speed up vaccination Delay the second vaccination To increase the initial dose on people’s arms.

Both the US market vaccines developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna require two doses, the second intended to be given 21 and 28 days after the first vaccine, respectively.

Forch said on Sunday at CNN that the United States is currently sticking to a vaccination schedule backed by clinical trial data.

“Science directly points to continuing what we know … from clinical trials,” he said.

Good news about cases and hospitalization (for now)

Nationally, the rates of new Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths are declining.

According to the COVID follow-up project, the number of patients admitted to Covid-19 has declined for 40 consecutive days.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the number of daily deaths last week has decreased by 24% compared to the previous week.

According to Johns Hopkins, daily new cases decreased by 23% over the same period. (However, according to the COVID tracking project, testing has also decreased by 17%.)

“I’m very excited about where we are,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of Public Health at Brown University. “Now we have a few roads ahead.”

The uplift of those roads contains some concerns A variant of the coronavirus.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1,700 cases of the first mutants found in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil have been reported in the United States.

However, that number is probably far from the actual number of variant cases in the United States. The United States lags behind dozens of other countries Genomic sequencing per 1,000 Covid-19 cases.

Valensky said US enhanced sequence to find variants And will continue to do so.

Most of the variant cases to date have been associated with the first highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant detected in the United Kingdom.

An expert at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington said: Over the weekend, the B.1.1.7 strain can account for less than 20% of current infectious diseases in the United States, That number could surge to 80% by late April..

“It’s not time to relax your vigilance.”

What happens next depends largely on individual responsibility and the number of people vaccinated. IHME team Said..

“The next four months of epidemic management will increase the scale of vaccination, increase the proportion of adults who wish to be vaccinated to more than three-quarters, strongly recommend continued use of masks, eat indoors, etc. It relies heavily on avoiding situations where infection is likely to occur. Going to a bar or an indoor gathering with an individual outside the house. ” The team wrote..

The American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and the American Nurses Association have also begged Americans to help quell the pandemic.

“With new, more contagious variants of the virus prevailing throughout the United States, it’s not time to relax your vigilance and reduce measures known to work to prevent further illness and death- Wearing a mask, practicing physical distance, and washing your hands, “said the joint statement.

Why you can wear a mask next winter

Some Americans have discovered unexpected benefits of wearing a mask in the winter. It protects not only from the coronavirus but also from the cruel cold.

And when some health professionals say Covid-19 may rekindle, Americans may be wearing them next winter.

Fauci added that he said he wanted it not to happen. It’s possible “ People may be wearing masks in 2022.

Infectious disease expert and epidemiologist Dr. Celine Gounder said there may be other ways in which daily life is different from the past.

“I think we’re seeing some new normals, for example, I think handshakes will probably be gone,” she said.

“I think winter cough / cold / flu season masks make a lot of sense. It clearly understands the importance of wearing a mask and makes Southeast Asian countries from some of the worst of this. I really isolated it. “

For those who have already been vaccinated, health experts say You need to keep wearing the mask.. This is because it does not guarantee that the vaccine will take several weeks to be fully effective and that the vaccine will not infect others with the coronavirus.

“It is estimated that about 70% of Americans must be vaccinated before they can obtain herd immunity through vaccination,” said Dr. Lina Wen, a medical analyst at CNN. “That’s the point where enough people have immune protection to prevent the virus from spreading anymore.”

Also, delaying the transmission of the coronavirus prevents the virus from becoming more mutated.

“By March or April of last year, the evidence that uniform wearing of masks reduced the transmission of the disease was fairly convincing,” said Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, HBO on Sunday. Told Axios.

He said the politicization of face masks probably resulted in many unnecessary deaths.

“Masks are nothing more than life-saving medical devices, but they are still not true, scientific, and frankly not dangerous, they have been categorized in other ways of all kinds,” he added. “And I think we can claim that tens of thousands of people have died as a result.”