The pandemic marks another grim milestone: 1 in 500 Americans have died of covid-19 The burden of death in the prime of life has been disproportionately borne by Black, Latino, and American Indian and Alaska Native people. Dan Keating, Akilah Johnson Washington Post

At a certain point, it was no longer a matter of if the United States would reach the gruesome milestone of 1 in 500 people dying of covid-19, but a matter of when. A year? Maybe 15 months? The answer: 19 months. ...

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — A summer that began with plunging caseloads and real hope that the worst of Covid-19 had passed is ending with soaring death counts, full hospitals and a bitter realization that the coronavirus is going to remain a fact of American life for the foreseeable future.

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accination rates are ticking upward, and reports of new infections are starting to fall in some hard-hit Southern states. But Labor Day weekend bears little resemblance to Memorial Day, when the country was averaging fewer than 25,000 cases daily, or to the Fourth of July, when President Biden spoke about nearing independence from the virus.