evidence: The United States is nearing 1 million deaths from covid — a number that few thought possible when the pandemic began. In March 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that based on modeling of the pace of the coronavirus’s spread in the U.S. at that time, "between 100,000 and 200,000" people may die from covid. Reaching a million deaths seemed even more improbable when safe and effective vaccines came onto the market in December 2020. More than 60% of the 977,000 deaths have occurred since then.