U.S. Deaths From Covid-19 Match Toll Of Three Major Wars [Infographic]

On Monday, the number of American deaths from Covid-19 surpassed the staggering milestone of 500,000. President Biden held a moment of silence and a candle-lighting ceremony at sunset at the White House where he ordered U.S. flags to be lowered at federal buildings for the next five days. “As a nation, we can’t accept such a cruel fate. We have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow”, he said before adding that “today I ask all Americans to remember. Remember those we lost and remember those we left behind”. Johns Hopkins University data confirmed that the U.S. has passed the grim half-million milestone yesterday and despite the pace of vaccinations accelerating considerably, a closely watched model from the University of Washington suggests that the country will experience 589,000 deaths by June 1.

It is difficult to imagine what 500,000 lost lives looks like but the figure is broadly equivalent to the combined number of Americans killed in three major wars – World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Data from the Department of Veteran’s Affairs shows that approximately 405,000 Americans died in the Second World War while a further 36,000 lost their lives in Korea. The U.S. death toll in the Vietnam War was around 58,000. Collectively, the number of U.S. deaths in all three conflicts comes to around half a million with the Johns Hopkins University listing 500,310 U.S. deaths from Covid-19 as of February 23. If a minute of silence was held for every American who died from Covid-19, it would take 347 days – close to a year – to honor them all.

*Click below to enlarge (charted by Statista)