Worldwide, COVID-19 has infected 608 million people and killed 6.5 million since the start of its spread in late 2019. According to nearly all experts, these numbers are low. Counts may be low by 50% or more, particularly in nations without sophisticated national data collection systems.

The spread of COVID-19 has declined only moderately since the pandemic began. Deaths, on the other hand, have fallen substantially. This is mostly because over 12.6 billion vaccine doses have been given worldwide. However, hot spots continue to pop up across the world. The most visible recently has been in China’s largest cities. The government lockdown of these cities has been substantial enough to cut into the nation’s gross domestic product.

The numbers of cases and deaths in developing nations have been particularly high. At the top of this list are Brazil, India, Indonesia and Turkey. The counts in the countries, once again, are considered too low by a substantial factor.

Ironically, the country with the most COVID-19 deaths is often considered the one with the best health system in the world. There have been 95 million cases and 1.1 million deaths in the United States so far. The death figure is 17% of the world’s total.

One reason the U.S. death numbers are so high is how hard the disease hit early in the pandemic’s cycle. Thousands of people died in the New York area in early 2020. Fatality figures jumped later in large cities in the West, especially in Los Angeles. This happened before there was a widely available vaccine. Another surge in early 2021 took even more lives.

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It is a shock that a country with a highly advanced medical system could have so many deaths. However, a large part of the population refused vaccines, due primarily to the misplaced belief that the federal government was using vaccination to control the population, or that the vaccines were not effective at all. These beliefs led to tens of thousands of deaths.

The high number of deaths in the United States is not over. Despite vaccine availability, much of the population has abandoned practices that help thwart the spread of the disease. Over 400 people per day die from COVID-19 infection in America. This means it will be one of the top five causes of death in America this year.

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