THE U.S. ON February 22, 2021 crossed a grave milestone in the coronavirus pandemic that was unimaginable a year ago – half a million Americans dead.
It's nearly the population of Atlanta and higher than that of Miami.
As recently as May 2020, former President Donald Trump was predicting a death toll of 100,000 while former White House coronavirus task force member Deborah Birx said the number could be as high as 240,000. Neither prediction came close to the real death toll.
Leading infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said Monday of the previous prediction: "People were thinking we were being hyperbolic about it, and now here we are with a half a million deaths, just a stunning figure."
With over 28 million cases, the U.S. leads the world in both infections and deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
"I believe that if you look back historically, we've done worse than most any other country, and we're a highly developed rich country," Fauci told "Good Morning America" on Monday. But instead of examining what went wrong in the past, Fauci said he would rather people "go forward and be completely committed as a unified country to just go at this together."
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