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One hundred thousand Americans dead in less than four months. It’s as if every person in Edison, N.J., or Kenosha, Wis., died. It’s half the population of Salt Lake City or Grand Rapids, Mich. It’s about 20 times the number of people killed in homicides in that length of time, about twice the number who die of strokes. The death toll from the coronavirus passed that hard-to-fathom marker on Wednesday, which slipped by like so many other days in this dark spring, one more spin of the Earth, one more headline in a numbing cascade of grim news. (Fisher, 5/27)

In about three months, more Americans have died from COVID-19 than during the Korean War, Vietnam War and the U.S. conflict in Iraq from 2003-2011 combined. The new respiratory disease has also killed more people than the AIDS epidemic did from 1981 through 1989, and it is far deadlier than the seasonal flu has been in decades. The last time the flu killed as many people in the United States was in the 1957-1958 season, when 116,000 died. (Shumaker, 5/27)

A day before the U.S. reached the 100,000-death mark, Trump once again blamed China for not stopping the virus before it spread across the globe, and touted his decision in January to restrict travel from China to the U.S. “For all of the political hacks out there, if I hadn’t done my job well, & early, we would have lost 1 1/2 to 2 Million People, as opposed to the 100,000 plus that looks like will be the number,” he tweeted on Tuesday. (Lim, 5/27)

COVID-19 has also laid bare many long-standing inequities and failings in America’s health care system. It is devastating, but not surprising, to learn that many of those who have been most harmed by the virus are also Americans who have long suffered from historical social injustices that left them particularly susceptible to the disease. This massive loss of life wasn’t inevitable. It wasn’t simply unfortunate and regrettable. (Chen, 5/27)

The first U.S. death was reported Feb. 29, a patient in the Seattle area, but several earlier fatalities — not attributed at the time to COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus — have since come to light. Today, the United States, despite its wealth and scientific prowess, has the world’s highest numbers of both cases and deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University’s widely cited global tracker. The efforts to contain the contagion have closed businesses, sent unemployment to Depression-era levels, spurred Congress to pass four relief measures totaling nearly $3 trillion, with more promised, and upended the year’s political contests for the White House and control of Congress. (King and Calmes, 5/27)

The virus has been disproportionately infecting communities of color. Black Americans represent 13.4% of the American population, according to the US Census Bureau, but counties with higher black populations accounted for more than half of all Covid-19 cases and almost 60% of deaths as of mid-April, a study by epidemiologists and clinicians found. The virus has also exploited monetary divides, as infections at meat-packing plants show, while many white-collar workers work from home. (Collinson, 5/28)

The coronavirus continues to batter the U.S. health care workforce. More than 60,000 health care workers have been infected and close to 300 have died from COVID-19, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The numbers mark a staggering increase from six weeks ago when the CDC first released data on coronavirus infections and deaths among nurses, doctors, pharmacists, EMTs, technicians and other medical employees. (Stone and Feibel, 5/28)

Kaiser Health News: Lost On The Frontline

Over 100,000 Americans are now confirmed dead. Many of the COVID-19 victims are health care professionals who risked their lives to fight the outbreak. As the nation passes this grim milestone, The Guardian and KHN profiles the lost workers. (5/27)

Experts say official totals likely understate the extent of the pandemic, in part because of limited and differing testing capabilities in the U.S. and around the world. Estimates for the U.S. death toll have varied, and some modelers say it is difficult to make projections beyond a few weeks out. As of May 26, the Reich Lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst estimated the U.S. would likely reach 117,000 to 130,000 deaths by June 20, a forecast based on projections from multiple modeling groups. (Ansari and Schwartz, 5/27)

As the U.S. reached a grim milestone in the outbreak, The New York Times gathered names of the dead and memories of their lives from obituaries across the country. (5/27)

No infectious disease in a century has exacted as swift and merciless a toll on the United States as covid-19. With no vaccine and no cure, the pandemic has killed people in every state. The necessary isolation it imposes has robbed the bereaved of proper goodbyes and the comfort of mourning rituals. Those remembered in this continually updating series represent but some of the tens of thousands who have died. Some were well-known, and many were unsung. All added their stories, from all walks of life, to the diversity of the American experience. (5/27)

Public health experts said the coronavirus has exposed the vulnerability of a wide range of Americans and the shortcomings of a U.S. health care system faced with a deadly pandemic."What is different about this is, it is affecting all of us in a variety of ways, even if some of us are able to social distance in more effective ways than others," said sociology professor Kathleen Cagney, who directs the University of Chicago's Population Research Center. "But we all feel at risk." (Welna, 5/27)

President Trump’s plans to attend a historic space launch were spoiled Wednesday by bad weather, causing him to return to Washington without giving a planned address as the nation crossed the grim threshold of 100,000 coronavirus deaths. The launch and Trump’s remarks thereafter would have represented an opportunity for the president to draw on a positive narrative of U.S. advancements under his administration and highlight priorities beyond confronting the coronavirus pandemic. “This is a very exciting day for our country,” Trump said at a launch briefing less than an hour before SpaceX canceled the launch because of inclement weather. “We have been at this long and hard for three and a half years.” (Chalfant, 5/27)

President Trump has spent his life in thrall to numbers — his wealth, his ratings, his polls. Even during the deadly coronavirus pandemic, he has remained fixated on certain metrics — peppering aides about infection statistics, favoring rosy projections and obsessing over the gyrating stock market. But as the nation reached a bleak milestone this week — 100,000 Americans dead from the novel coronavirus — Trump has been uncharacteristically silent. His public schedule this week contains no special commemoration, no moment of silence, no collective sharing of grief. (Parker, 5/27)

Casting himself as a "wartime president" in command of the country's response to an "invisible enemy," he has suggested American casualties were inevitable. He has deflected questions about what death toll he finds acceptable in exchange for reopening the economy by saying "one death is too many." He acknowledged Tuesday, in a tweet, that it "looks like" 100,000 "will be the number." (Cathey, 5/27)

The novel coronavirus pandemic has left an indelible mark on Americans of all ages and from all walks of life, with the death toll reaching the grim milestone of 100,000 -- more than the deadliest flu season in recent years and at such a startlingly quick pace that it forced the unprecedented shutdown of the country's economy. Those we've lost come from all backgrounds and include the very people -- first responders and medical staff -- who have been working so diligently and selflessly to stem the tide of the infection and care for the sick. (Shapiro, Brown, Lloyd and Miller, 5/27)

In a matter of months, the coronavirus crisis has exploded into a pandemic of historic proportions. Like a wave, the numbers of those sickened and killed by the virus have swelled in quick succession, leaving many bereft, isolated and wondering, “How did we get here?” Less than four months after the United States’ first recorded Covid-19 death in February, more than 100,000 deaths have been reported on American soil. A timeline of this grim reality reveals a country trying to come to terms with the crisis while the death toll continues to rise, surpassing the losses of major wars, the attacks on 9/11 and numerous other outbreaks. (Willingham, Rigdon and Merrill, 5/27)

The log of our great catastrophes takes in disasters both natural and man-made. We stack them up, place them side by side, but there is no comparing. Each is unique and uniquely tragic. Numbers lend perspective. They allow for rankings. But they can’t measure the true extent of loss. Pictures are insufficient. Words fail. (5/27)

One hundred thousand. Two different totals surpassed that milestone on Wednesday. After roughly 10 weeks of growth — explosive at some points, steadier at others — the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus surpassed 100,000 on Wednesday, according to data maintained by Johns Hopkins University. The tally comes four months after federal officials confirmed the first known case in the country. (McGough, 5/27)

A growing pool of global death statistics indicates that few countries are accurately capturing fatalities from the new coronavirus—and in some the shortfall is significant. In the U.S., Russia, the U.K., the Netherlands and many other countries, the number of deaths recorded from all causes has jumped since March and far exceeded the number of deaths those countries report as linked to Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. (Michaels, 5/28)

Over the past month, Hong Kong has averaged one new confirmed coronavirus case a day. Taiwan has reported only one case in the past three weeks. The situation is similar in Vietnam. Although the number of coronavirus cases continues to grow globally, there are places that have managed to successfully control COVID-19. (Beaubien, 5/27)