We were recently informed that the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 now stands at about 520,000. Given a U.S. population of about 330 million this means that the virus has killed one out of every 634 persons in America.
1) How many of those deceased were seniors whose immune systems were worn out because of their old age and could no longer defend them?
2) How many had pre-existing conditions that left them vulnerable to the virus?
3) How many were young and healthy prior to the attack of the virus?
To me these are relevant questions, yet I don’t ever recall them ever having been brought up in any discussion of the virus. Don’t we — the public — deserve the answers to these questions?
Terence McManus, New Sharon
Editor’s note: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks and posts this data as part of its daily mortality overview, at www.cdc.gov/nchs/covid19/mortality-overview.htm The data, which tracks COVID-19-related deaths by age, gender, race and Hispanic origin and place of death, comes directly from death certificates.
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