On Thursday, the White House marked this tragic milestone -- equivalent to the population of San Jose, California, being wiped off the map. That is also more than the number of American deaths from World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War COMBINED.

One Million lives lost to COVID-19 may also be a notable undercount in the USA...
Meanwhile, the count continues on. COVID hasn't gone away, and it's not the same as the seasonal flu.

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“Even as we hit this unthinkable milestone, the country is still massively divided on the reality of this pandemic and the tools we have to combat it. Not only do safe and effective vaccines remain hotly debated but so do masks, a non-invasive tool widely recognized as basic personal protection.”

"The death toll (currently low in comparison to the early 2022 surge) is still averaging more than 300 individuals a day, according to federal data. Despite high vaccination rates in older populations (in recent months, during the omicron surge) 73% of COVID deaths have still been among those 65 and older: both vaccinated and unvaccinated. However, a great many Americans feel that this older portion of the US population are “expendable” due to their age… That overlooks the fact that many of those older individuals may have had a normal, good lifespan of 20 to 30 or more years without COVID. Still, that doesn’t seem to matter to those who are not affected. The elderly are not valued in the USA."

"Another reason experts said COVID-19 deaths may have become normalized is because many Americans are trying to forget that they even occurred in the first place. Americans have grown sick and tired of the pandemic … and memorialization of those lost tends to remind us of its ongoing presence. The average, younger American now tends to feel that if it’s not them, COVID deaths don’t matter…. Death went from being a collective problem to be solved to now being an individualized issue that effects “someone else.”

In short: The American approach to COVID seems to be “ignore it and hope it goes away, and hope the interventions we have right now are functional enough to make it tolerable at least for a younger population.