Worldwide grief: Death toll from coronavirus tops 1 million

“And if you don't have that human factor right in your face, it's very easy to make it abstract.” Even at 1 million — greater than the population of Jerusalem or Austin, Texas, more than four times the number killed in the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean — the toll is almost certainly a vast undercount. Many deaths were probably missed because of insufficient testing and inconsistent reporting, and some suspect concealment by countries like Russia and Brazil.

Joginder Chaudhary was his parents' greatest pride, raised with the little they earned farming a half-acre plot in central India to become the first doctor from their village. For the coronavirus, though, he was just one more in a million.

After the virus killed the 27-year-old Chaudhary in late July, his mother wept inconsolably. With her son gone, Premlata Chaudhary said, how could she go on living? Three weeks later, on Aug. 18, the virus took her life, too — yet another number in an unrelenting march toward a woeful milestone. Now, 8 1/2 months after an infection doctors had never seen before claimed its first victims in China, the pandemic's confirmed death toll has eclipsed 1 million, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.

That is partly due to the virus's quickening spread through India, where reported deaths have topped 96,000 and cases are increasing at the fastest rate in the world. The United States, where the virus has killed about 205,000 people, accounts for 1 out of 5 deaths worldwide, far more than any other country despite its wealth and medical resources.

“It's not just a number. It's human beings. It's people we love,” said Dr. Howard Markel, a professor of medical history at the University of Michigan who has advised government officials on containing pandemics. On a Thursday morning in February, Markel's mother, 84 and infirm, was stricken by an illness later diagnosed as COVID-19. She died before midnight. “It's our brothers, our sisters. It's people we know,” Markel said. “And if you don't have that human factor right in your face, it's very easy to make it abstract.” Even at 1 million — greater than the population of Jerusalem or Austin, Texas, more than four times the number killed in the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean — the toll is almost certainly a vast undercount.

Many deaths were probably missed because of insufficient testing and inconsistent reporting, and some suspect concealment by countries like Russia and Brazil. “I can understand why ... numbers are losing their power to shock, but I still think it's really important that we understand how big these numbers really are,” said Mark Honigsbaum, the London-based author of “The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris.” Few people can testify to those numbers like the Rev. Mario Carminati, a priest in the northern Italian province of Bergamo, which was hit by one of Europe's first major outbreaks last spring. When the virus overwhelmed local cemeteries, Carminati opened his church to the dead, lining up 80 coffins in the center aisle. After an army convoy carted them to a crematory, another 80 arrived. Then 80 more.

“It was something completely unpredictable that arrived like a bolt of lightning in a clear sky ... and struck our reality,” he said. Government leaders in countries such as Germany, South Korea and New Zealand worked effectively to contain it. Brazil has recorded the second most deaths after the U.S., with about 142,000. India is third and Mexico fourth, with more than 76,000.

Oscar Ortiz, an oil platform worker for Mexico's state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos, said he felt helpless while ill and quarantined this spring, as 14 of his coworkers died from the virus, three in a single week. “It's very painful to see this and not be able to do anything,” said Ortiz, whose company has reported more than 300 deaths in its ranks.

India, whose government relaxed tight restrictions in recent months to jump-start an economy where many subsist on earnings from day labor, is the latest example. “When the pandemic actually started to get under control to some extent, the lockdown was eased and then completely lifted,” said K. Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. “The virus had a free passage and could spread much more easily.” With so many of the deaths beyond view in hospital wards and clustered on society's margins, the milestone recalls the grim pronouncement often attributed to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin: One death is a tragedy, millions of deaths are a statistic.

The pandemic's toll of 1 million dead in such a limited time rivals some of the gravest threats to public health, past and present. “COVID's grip on humanity is incomparably greater than the grip of other causes of death,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University. He noted the unemployment, poverty and despair caused by the pandemic, and deaths from myriad other illnesses that have gone untreated.

Up to now, the disease has left only a faint footprint on Africa, well shy of early modeling that predicted thousands more deaths. But cases have recently surged in countries like Britain, Spain, Russia and Israel. In the United States, the return of students to college campuses has sparked new outbreaks. With approval and distribution of a vaccine still probably months away and winter approaching in the Northern Hemisphere, the toll will continue to climb.

“We're only at the beginning of this. We're going to see many more weeks ahead of this pandemic than we've had behind us,” Gostin said. Already, though, far too many grieve.

“This pandemic has ruined my family,” said Rajendra Chaudhary, who lost his son, the young Indian doctor, and then his wife. “All our aspirations, our dreams, everything is finished.”.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)