Historical Context

The first known cases of COVID-19 were detected in early December of 2019. Only four months later, on March 11th, 2020, the spread of COVID-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). The COVID-19 pandemic would officially continue for another three years, with the WHO only declaring an end to the pandemic on May 5th, 2023.

At the height of the pandemic, the United States was reporting as many as three thousand deaths from COVID-19 per day. By the end of the pandemic, the United States had reported over 100,000,000 COVID-19 cases.

The socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 on the United States, and the world, are stark and lasting.