Yet..

 

The U.S. has already suffered more deaths from the coronavirus-borne illness COVID-19 in 2021 than in 2020, even though vaccines that prevent serious illness and death have been widely available, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

With more than a month to go to close out the year, the CDC has recorded 386,233 COVID deaths in 2021 through Tuesday, more than the 385,343 counted in 2020, as the New York Times reported.

The cause was not just persistently low vaccine uptake but also the relaxation of safety measures such as wearing face masks and avoiding indoor gatherings, with many people wrongly assuming that vaccines alone had effectively ended the crisis.

The last 100,000 deaths came in just the past 11 weeks, a quicker pace than any at other point aside from last winter's surge.

"The waves of illness that we're seeing will continue until the population-level immunity is high enough to prevent them. Quite simply, we're not there yet," said Dr Keri Althoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.  Just a Not there Yet" thought.