Putting It In Perspective

More Than 110,000 People Have Died from Covid-19 in the United States. What Does That Number Really Look Like?

The United States surpassed 110,000 deaths from Covid-19 on Sunday, according to the CSSE at Johns Hopkins University. What does a number that big really look like?

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

By Elizabeth Hunt BrockwayPublished Jun 08, 2020 11:17AM EDT

The number lives claimed by COVID-19 in the United States surpassed 110,000 on Sunday afternoon, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. The unprecedented milestone is clearly a somber one, yet the full scope of 110,000 lives lost remains hard to imagine. In an effort to try and visualize the loss, we compared the death toll to populations of state capitals below the 110,000-person threshold. The result, presented below, are 19 state capital cities whose entire populations pale in comparison to our country's coronavirus mortalities over the past five months.