The United States recorded the highest daily death toll from COVID-19 – nearly 3,900 – on the same day that a mob attack on Capitol Hill exposed some of the deep political divisions that have stymied the fight against the pandemic.
Infections are on the rise in several states and California is hit particularly hard, reporting a record 1,042 deaths from coronavirus in two days on Thursday. The increase in deaths and infections threatens to force hospitals to ration and essentially decide who will live and who will die.
“People have trouble breathing. They seem to drown when they are in bed in front of us, ”says Dr. Jeffrey Chien, emergency room physician at Santa Clara Valley Regional Medical Center. “I beg everyone to help us because we are not on the front line. We are on the last line ”.
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About 1.9 million people have died from the coronavirus in the world, of which more than 360,000 in the United States. December was by far the country’s deadliest month, and experts are warning January could be even worse due to family reunions and seasonal vacation trips.
A new, more contagious variant of the virus is spreading around the world, as well as in the United States. It also remains to be seen how the presence of thousands of President Donald Trump supporters in Washington this week, many of them without masks, will have on public health.
Trump has downplayed the virus and scorned face masks, and many of his supporters are following suit. He has lashed out at quarantines and incited protesters to object to restrictions in states like Michigan, where his armed supporters raided the legislature a few months ago.
On Wednesday, as a horde of protesters stormed the Capitol to avoid certification of Joe Biden’s election victory, the United States recorded 3,865 deaths from the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University. Figures can fluctuate dramatically after holidays and weekends.
“The internal terrorists have caught up with the Capitol police, just as the virus has caught up with the Americans,” said Dr. Eric Topol, Head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. “The United States lost control of a Trump-instigated mob and a pandemic virus that was put down by Trump.”
Some of the forces that contributed to the outbreak of violence were partially anticipated by global planning experts when they conducted a desk exercise in 2019, said Dr. Eric Toner, an academic at the UJH Center for Health Security who led the exercise. .
“We are considering the possibility of active disinformation and the exploitation of a pandemic for political gain,” said Toner. “Real life turned out to be much worse.”
In California, health authorities reported 583 new deaths on Thursday, one day after the list of 459. The total death toll in California since the start of the pandemic is more than 28,000.
The state also reported more than a quarter of a million new cases every week, with Arizona alone surpassing California in per capita cases. Florida surpassed the highest number of cases in one day with over 19,800 and 22,400 deaths.
On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 5.3 million people in the United States had received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, far below the millions of Americans who need it to stop the virus.