The number was just a ballpark estimate, drawn from modeling by the epidemiologist Trevor Bedford.
But the burden of Covid is also obviously subsiding, and the shadow of the first-year emergency is retreating even further.
As the fourth anniversary of the pandemic’s start brings a new flurry of retrospectives, I find myself marveling not just about the many narratives we’re still getting wrong but also about how many seemingly contradictory stories can be justified by the facts.
In 2020, we often assessed that toll pretty crudely, using raw death counts, which invariably made the United States look like the world’s biggest pandemic failure.
This produced one of the dominant morality tales of the pandemic’s first years: that the countries that should have expected to do best were, in fact, faring worst and that the United States under Donald Trump was the world’s most conspicuous example of pandemic mismanagement.
Persons:
Trevor Bedford, marveling, we’re, Donald Trump
Locations:
United States