The Commonwealth study wasn’t peer-reviewed, but it builds on a methodology that was. But estimates of the potential death toll, in red, suggest that vaccines averted a catastrophe. Even without counting the continued impact of the omicron variant in 2022, it’s a stunning effect that presents a different side to the story of the pandemic.Ĭovid-19 has taken a terrible toll, as the graph of daily Covid-19 deaths shows in blue. The question is, how do we figure out how many deaths were avoided? Scientists have modeled a world without vaccines and found some surprising answers.įrom the start of the US vaccination campaign through the end of November 2021, Covid-19 vaccines prevented about 1.1 million deaths and 10.3 million hospitalizations in the United States, according to estimates by the health care foundation The Commonwealth Fund. Perhaps, we can even find some hope and optimism amid a stream of misery. By studying the number of lives saved and how those deaths were averted, we can decide what to do next. To understand the current moment, we need both - the harm done as well as the harm avoided. But these numbers can obscure the progress against the disease. Trackers have counted the mounting death toll since 2020, each spike revealing setbacks and missteps. The most visible part of the pandemic is what has been lost. As the pandemic drags into its third year, it’s hard to see it any other way.īut another story of the pandemic focuses on its unprecedented scientific achievements: In record time, scientists went from discovering a new virus to unpacking its genome to developing multiple effective ways to prevent and treat it, fueling what may be the largest public health effort in history. One is that a cataclysm we weren’t prepared for - worsened by policy mistakes, misinformation, and global inequity - claimed more than 5 million souls and stalled the lives and livelihoods of billions of people around the world. There are several ways to look at the Covid-19 pandemic.
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