US passes 400,000 coronavirus deaths today

The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus has topped 400,000 in the final hours of Donald Trump’s presidency. The milestone comes almost exactly a year after health officials diagnosed the nation’s first case of the virus, and after months of efforts by Trump to downplay the threat and his administration’s responsibility to confront it. The number of dead is about equal to the population of Tulsa, Oklahoma; Tampa, Florida; or New Orleans. It is just short of the estimated 409,000 Americans who died in 2019 of strokes, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, flu and pneumonia combined. By week’s end, the toll will probably surpass the number of Americans killed in World War II.