As America’s Covid death toll surpasses its WWII losses, a reminder of another U.S. surrender a century ago.

(Originally published Feb. 1 in “What in the World“) The pandemic has now killed as many Americans, proportionally, as the United States lost in World War II. At least 900,000 have died and the daily loss continues to accelerate.

These weren’t soldiers fighting to liberate lands from an invader, or to defend cherished principles such as liberty or democracy from fascism. There is no triumph to justify their sacrifice. Other nations have paid a heavier toll—mainly in Eastern Europe and South America. But of the more than 5.6 million people Covid has claimed globally, the U.S. has contributed more bodies than any other nation. If the pandemic is a war, it is certainly losing.

What’s more dispiriting about America’s surrender to the virus is that we’ve been here before. As John Barry reminds us in an essay for The New York Times, Americans weary of fighting the influenza pandemic of 1918 and gave up long before their countrymen stopped dying. While the pandemic was declared over by mid-1919, new variants kept killing Americans at rates that rivaled earlier waves well into 1920:

Nearly all cities in the United States imposed restrictions during the pandemic’s virulent second wave, which peaked in the fall of 1918. That winter, some cities reimposed controls when a third, though less deadly wave struck. But virtually no city responded in 1920. People were weary of influenza, and so were public officials. Newspapers were filled with frightening news about the virus, but no one cared. People at the time ignored this fourth wave; so did historians. The virus mutated into ordinary seasonal influenza in 1921, but the world had moved on well before.

The problem with this is twofold. First, ignoring the continued death toll Covid is exacting represents a shocking and reprehensible disregard for human life. There is no reason to accept this many new deaths as natural in the way we accept deaths from other diseases. Indeed, it’s remarkable that this has to be articulated.

Second, the risks we take to gather and travel against the odds of catching Covid aren’t risks we assume alone. They’re risks we impose on our fellow human beings. Even if one person catches Covid and survives, they are then likely to pass it along to someone who doesn’t. Even if they survive, they risk developing chronic illness. And everyone who catches Covid keeps the virus going, giving it another opportunity to mutate into a new strain that’s more virulent or, as a new Danish study confirms of the latest Omicron subvariant BA.2, more contagious. (A person with BA.2 is 33% more likely to give it to someone else they encounter, the study found.) In this way, Covid isn’t a personal choice, like smoking. Disregarding Covid and “living with the virus,” at least at its current level of mortality, is to condemn others to death.

In the meantime, the world is divided between those still working to preserve life until the virus finally assumes a more benign form and those who will no longer wait and have instead decided to risk life for something as seemingly inconsequential as their freedom to travel or congregate in a restaurant or bar. And because the latter group’s behavior helps the virus spread and survive, these people are inflicting a tyranny over the former group, keeping it in an extended state of siege. The West is inflicting extended quarantine and social distancing measures on Asia; the healthy are inflicting danger upon the weak; the young are inflicting a diminished lifestyle on their elders; the cavalier are inflicting prolonged anxiety on the cautious.

Tensions between Russia and the U.S. over Ukraine continue to rise, with both nations using a Monday meeting of United Nations Security Council to hurl accusations at each other. Not much has changed in either side’s position: the Russian accuse the U.S. of stoking tensions and trying to provoke Moscow while failing to address its security concerns; the U.S. accuses Russia of destabilizing Ukraine while organizing an invasion.