600,000 dead in the US from COVID-19: American capitalism “normalizes” mass death

On Thursday, the US National Cathedral rang its bell 600 times, once for every thousand people who have lost their lives to COVID-19 in the United States. But this little publicized event, which did not even make the evening news, was among the only public acknowledgements of the terrible milestone of 600,000 dead.

[wsws.org]

What else has a Biden presidency silenced? Well, virus deaths of course. With approximately 400 people still dying each day, they are of no concern to our representation or the media the ruling class own. If they aren't of a concern, then what got us to 600,000 will not be properly investigated either.

{No one who watches the evening news would know that, in the past 30 days alone, 15,000 people have lost their lives from COVID-19 in the US—more than die of AIDS in an entire year. And when the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington estimated last month that the actual COVID-19 death toll was closer to 900,000, the media largely ignored the figure.}

As for “much of the world,” contrary to the Times’ claims, the pandemic is raging without restraint. Even before we reach the halfway mark for the year, more people have died from the pandemic in 2021 (1,884,000) than in all of 2020 (1,880,000).

{The normalization of death arises from the decision, rooted in class interests, to treat “economic health” and “human life” as comparable phenomena, with the former prioritized over the latter. Once the legitimacy of the comparison and prioritization is accepted—as it is by the political establishment, the oligarchs and the media—mass death is viewed as unavoidable.}

As usual, WSWS seen it before hand.