The data doesn't lie. A new report looking at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) released on Tuesday showed that more people in the U.S. have died from COVID this year, under Democratic President Joe Biden's leadership compared to last year, under the Trump administration. This is in spite of the widespread availability of COVID vaccines, which the White House has touted as "life-saving."
According to Breitbart, a just-released New York Times report cited CDC data, which showed how there were 386,233 COVID-related deaths in the U.S. in 2021 as of Tuesday. In Fall 2020, the U.S. recorded 385,343 fatalities. The 386,000+ figure is set to increase given that the year isn't over just yet.
The NYTimes report said that experts attributed the increase in COVID deaths to "confluence of factors" including "crucially lower-than-needed vaccination rates, but also the relaxation of everyday precautions, like masks and social distancing, and the rise of the highly contagious Delta variant." The report added that Americans' behavior has changed, as people have been acting like COVID "is now a manageable, endemic disease rather than a crisis - a transition that will happen eventually but has not happened yet."
The NYTimes report added that vaccine hesitancy and resistance has prevented the U.S. from making that transition to "endemicity," a term used by scientists to describe a period when COVID would "circulate at a lower level with periodic increases and decreases, but not spike in the devastating cycles that have characterized the pandemic."
Only 59% of Americans have fully vaccinated status, which makes it the lowest ranking among any Group of 7 nations. Breitbart's Hannah Bleau argued, however, that it is illogical to blame the increased COVID deaths on "lower-than-needed vaccination rates," as vaccines have been widely available for most of 2021. She argued that in 2020, the Trump administration was tasked with rolling out vaccine production through Operation Warp Speed, which only made vaccines available to most of the general public this year. Even with the vaccines, however, fully vaccinated individuals still carried and spread COVID.
Another argument debunked is that the increased COVID deaths were due to "relaxation of everyday precautions," which was a major incentive that authorities hinted at to Americans if they got vaccinated. But despite increasing vaccination rates, restrictions, mask mandates, and other limitations continued to pile on regardless of people's vaccination status.
Data has also continuously shown that states that continue to implement restrictions have not fared well. Take into consideration Illinois, which reported a daily average of 4,599 cases, or 36 per capita, versus Florida's daily average of 1,397 cases, or seven per 100,000, the lowest in the entire country. Florida saw a 5% drop in cases in the last two weeks. Illinois saw a 73% jump over the same time period. Blue states such as Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania, are seeing the same trend.
During last year's second presidential debate, then-candidate Biden placed the blame on Trump for COVID deaths across the country, highlighting how at the time there were 220,000 who perished from COVID. The Democratic leader argued, "If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this - anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as President of the United States of America."
As per the New York Times' tracker, there have been 774,580 deaths in the U.S. as of November 2021.
