Why it matters: The death toll is larger than the total number of U.S. soldiers killed in action in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined. It comes just one year after the country’s first coronavirus death was confirmed.

“Each death has left an empty space in communities across America: a bar stool where a regular used to sit, one side of a bed unslept in, a home kitchen without its cook,” the New York Times’ Julie Bosman writes.

The scale of the horrifying loss is hard to visualize.

If 500,000 names were listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the height of the structure would be 87 feet tall (instead of 10 feet), the Washington Post figures.