Saturday Night Social: Not to Be a Downer but 1 in 1,000 Americans Died of Covid This Year

The United States just hit perhaps its grimmest pandemic milestone yet with CNN reporting that approximately one in every 1,000 Americans have died from covid-19 since the country reported its first coronavirus-related death in February.

More than 331,000 Americans have died from covid as of Saturday afternoon, per Johns Hopkins University data provided to CNN—just over 0.1% of the total U.S. population per the Census Bureau’s most up-to-date estimate, the outlet notes.

The U.S. continues to lead globally in terms of covid deaths and infections, which hit 18,730,806 today according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s count. The next closest are India and Brazil, The Hill reports, with about 10.2 million and 7.4 million, respectively.

Speaking of global cases, Johns Hopkins University recorded its 80 millionth covid infection on Saturday, and all while three new strains of the novel coronavirus have been detected worldwide—two of which seem to be more easily transmissible than the one we’ve been dealing with all year, Al Jazeera reports.

At least none of the new strains appear to be more deadly or more resistant to the various vaccines being developed and deployed? What a fucking year where that can be considered a silver lining.