This week, the United States reached a milestone that many feared and few predicted — 500,000 COVID-19 deaths.
The nation hit that grim marker on Feb. 22, pushing U.S. President Joe Biden to order American flags to half staff through Friday and state governors — including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine — to follow suit.
Half a million people is a lot. Like, a lot a lot. It’s hard for the human brain to comprehend such a staggering number when most of us don’t deal with 500,000 of anything regularly.
So as we creep closer to the year anniversary of the March 2020 coronavirus lockdowns and we inevitably rack up more losses, we thought we’d try to quantify the magnitude of death through something that most of us get — Cincinnati sports.
We know what full stadiums look like, so visualizing the people who died from COVID as Bengals fans or Reds fans may help us understand just what a devastating loss the past year has brought.
- 500,000 people could fill the Cincinnati Bengals’ Paul Brown Stadium (which has a seating capacity of a little over 65,500) more than seven and a half times.
- 500,000 people could fill the Cincinnati Reds’ Great American Ball Park (around 42,000 capacity) almost 12 times.
- 500,000 people could fill the University of Cincinnati’s Nippert Stadium (around 40,000 capacity) 12 and a half times.
- 500,000 people could fill FC Cincinnati’s West End Stadium (around 26,000 capacity) more than 19 times.
- 500,000 people could fill the Cincinnati Cyclones’ Heritage Bank Center (around 17,500 capacity) 28 and a half times.
- 500,000 people could fill Xavier University’s Cintas Center (around 10,200 capacity) 49 times.
500,000 COVID deaths in less than a year is a hell of a lot of people.
