The US has now recorded more COVID-19 deaths than the number of Americans killed in combat during World War II, the bloodiest war in human history.
According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, the US saw 291,557 battle deaths during World War II. As of Thursday evening, 291,754 COVID-19 deaths had been reported in the US, based on data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
The coronavirus pandemic had killed more Americans than the Vietnam War by late April.
And by about mid-May, the US COVID-19 death toll had already surpassed the combined number of Americans killed in battle in every major US war since 1945 — nearly 87,000. The number of Americans killed by COVID-19 is now equivalent to almost half of the total death toll in the Civil War — approximately 620,000 — which was the bloodiest war in American history.
The US has consistently recorded the most COVID-19 cases and fatalities in the world. Johns Hopkins' tally of cases surpassed 15.5 million as of Thursday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday morning noted that the US COVID-19 death toll was approaching the World War II figure.
Pelosi begins press conference comparing US covid death toll to WWII deaths pic.twitter.com/NI31qqP3Ee
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 10, 2020
Pelosi said that the war brought the country together but that President Donald Trump was not a "unifying" president.
"We do not have a unifying president of the United States,"she said. "In fact, we have a president in denial, delaying, and distorting, calling it a hoax. Many more thousands of people have died because of that."
Trump has been widely criticized over his response to the US COVID-19 outbreak, and polling has consistently shown a majority of Americans disapprove of his handling of the pandemic.
The president has repeatedly downplayed the threat of COVID-19, which he was hospitalized for in early October, and gone against the recommendations of top public-health experts.
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