U.S. coronavirus death toll hits 50,000

Johns Hopkins' tracker of reported deaths from Covid-19 stands at 49,963; include Americans who died on cruise liners and the total stands at 50,451. The Wall Street Journal reports on the significance of numbers, with the U.S. now accounting for a third of the world's total.

Confirmed coronavirus cases world-wide Friday exceeded 2.7 million, with more than 190,000 dead, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. accounted for nearly a third of the cases, exceeding 869,000, and more than a quarter of the deaths, at 49,963.

The pandemic's true death toll is somewhat higher, and will be reavealed over time by the discounting of the normal number of deaths in the U.S. population from the actual number of deaths since the pandemic began. Conservatives insist, maliciously, that the death toll as it stands is in fact inflated, if not an outright hoax.