March 11, 2020
Four years ago today, society began to shut down.
Shortly after noon Eastern on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid — or “the coronavirus,” then the more popular term — to be a global pandemic. Stocks plummeted in the afternoon. In the span of a single hour that night, President Donald Trump delivered an Oval Office address about Covid, Tom Hanks posted on Instagram that he had the virus and the N.B.A. announced it had canceled the rest of its season.
It was a Wednesday, and thousands of schools would shut by the end of the week. Workplaces closed, too. People washed their hands frequently and touched elbows instead of shaking hands (although the C.D.C. continued to discourage widespread mask wearing for several more weeks).
The worst pandemic in a century had begun.
Today, on the unofficial fourth anniversary, I’ll update you on where things stand.
The true toll
Covid’s confirmed death toll — more than seven million people worldwide — is horrific on its own, and the true toll is much worse. The Economist magazine keeps a running estimate of excess deaths, defined as the number of deaths above what was expected from pre-Covid trends. The global total is approaching 30 million.
This number includes both confirmed Covid deaths and undiagnosed ones, which have been common in poorer countries. It includes deaths caused by pandemic disruptions, such as missed doctor appointments that might have prevented other diseases. The isolation of the pandemic also caused a surge of social ills in the U.S., including increases in deaths from alcohol, drugs, vehicle crashes and murders.
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| Eliana Marcela Rendón cries as her grandmother, Carmen Evelia Toro, died. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times |
Globally, Covid ranks among the worst killers since 1900. AIDS, for example, is estimated to have killed about 40 million people, but over a half century rather than only four years. The 1918 flu killed somewhere between 20 million and 50 million people.
Among high-income countries, the U.S. has had one of the highest Covid tolls. The excess-death rate here, as a study by Jennifer Nuzzo and Jorge Ledesma of Brown University notes, has been much higher than in Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, South Korea or Australia.
In addition to deaths from the virus, long Covid — which scientists still don’t understand — has afflicted many people.
Red Covid
The U.S. has fared so poorly for multiple reasons. Our medical system is scattered and uniquely expensive. Covid tests were hard to find here. And the U.S. failed to protect many residents of nursing homes, who were vulnerable because of the extreme age skew of Covid’s effects.
The biggest problem for the past three years, however, has involved vaccines.
Initially, many lower-income Americans, as well as Black and Latino Americans, couldn’t easily find vaccines. The Biden administration largely solved these access gaps in 2021. But a new problem then emerged: Many Americans, especially political conservatives, were skeptical of the vaccines despite overwhelming evidence of their effectiveness.
To this day, more than 30 percent of self-identified Republicans have not received a Covid vaccine shot, compared with less than 10 percent of Democrats. You can see the tragic effects of vaccine skepticism in this chart, by my colleague Ashley Wu, which compares the death rates in red and blue counties:
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| Sources: C.D.C. Wonder; Edison Research | Data excludes Alaska. | By The New York Times |
The chart tells two important stories. First, note that before vaccines were available, the cumulative death toll was similar in red and blue America. Although blue America wore masks more often, closed schools for longer and stayed home more, those measures turned out to be less successful than many liberals believed.
Why? Masks do work. But mask mandates tend to make little difference over extended periods. People simply won’t wear masks all the time in public for months on end. Remember the absurdity of restaurant diners wearing masks while walking to their table — and then taking them off to eat?
While many liberals exaggerated the value of pandemic restrictions, they were right about the vaccines. After vaccines became available, a huge partisan gap in Covid deaths opened. Even today, when most Americans have had the virus and have some natural immunity as a result, unvaccinated people are at much more risk.
Consider that about 95 percent of recent Covid-related hospitalizations in the U.S. have occurred among people who had not received an updated vaccine. This chart, based on data from Washington State, helps show the protective power of vaccines, especially for the elderly:
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| Source: Washington State Department of Health | By The New York Times |
Because so many Republicans remain unvaccinated, the partisan gap in Covid’s toll has continued to widen over the past year:
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| Sources: C.D.C. Wonder; Edison Research | Data excludes Alaska. | By The New York Times |
The indirect costs
For many young Americans, Covid’s biggest toll has come from the indirect costs.
Human beings are social creatures, and the pandemic’s disruption and isolation created problems from which we still have not recovered. Some of the ills I mentioned above — such as vehicle deaths and murders — have fallen from their Covid highs but remain above their prepandemic levels.
Among the biggest costs has been learning loss. Students have begun to recover some of the pandemic losses from long school closures but have a long way to go in most states:
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| Source: COVID-19 School Data Hub | Data for California, Oregon and Michigan are from 2019, 2022 and 2023. | By The New York Times |
Four years ago, our world changed. As a society, we are not close to fully recovered.
Our advice: If you’re older and haven’t recently gotten a vaccine shot, I hope you’ll consider getting one. And here’s a Times guide to treating Covid if you get it. It remains a serious illness today, akin to a more severe version of the flu.