The United States Situation: COVID-19 Confirmed Cases and Deaths
Although these graphs will display information from January 2020 until June 2021, the timeline for this project is January 2020 to April 2020.
The United States confirmed its first case of COVID-19 on January 20, 2020. Cases began steadily increasing to 49 confirmed cases on February 1, 2020. Less than a week later. A steady increase continued with 134 infections of COVID-19 on March 1, 2020. However, one month later, on April 1st, 2020, the numbers drastically changed. There were 168,208 positive cases. In one month the number of positive cases of COVID-19 had exponentially increased over 125,500%. This rapid inclination continued over the next month to 1,034,699 on May 1st, 2020. The first death from COVID-19 was on February 29th, 2020. At the end of the timeline, on May 1st, 2020 there were 61,347 deaths from COVID-19.
In five months, more than 60,000 people were dead in the United States from COVID-19, and over one million people contracted the virus. The Global Health Security Index ranked the United States, out of 195 countries, as the most capable and prepared for disease outbreak management. However, to briefly extend our timeline, “by July 2020 (the time of data collection), the U.S. was among the top countries in COVID-19 cases and deaths, both overall and per capita (Johns Hopkins University, 2020). By March 9, 2021, the U.S. had recorded nearly 29 million COVID-19 cases and nearly 525,000 deaths (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2021, March).” (Webster et al., 2021).
Despite the number one ranking from the Global Health Security, The United States underwent massive failures in many sectors of disease management, disease prevention, and disease spreading.The enormous failure of the United States resulted in community turmoil and illogical responses like hoarding, stockpiling, and ignoring the needs of others during a time of crisis: “Hoarding provides such a sense, as people feel that they are proactively addressing the threat. Toilet paper becomes the focal point of our anxiety instead of masks and personal protective equipment (PPE). Some nonessential items like guns and hard liquor become hot items...Stockpiles are already so low that healthcare professionals are reusing masks, calling for donations, or sewing their own home- made masks.” (Lee, 2020).