Enlarge / An elderly female patient with COVID-19 is treated at No. 2 People's Hospital of Fuyang City in China. (credit: Getty | Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocke )

With China's zero-COVID policy abruptly scrapped last month, the pandemic virus is now ripping through the country's population, and health experts are bracing for a wave of devastation as peak transmission shifts from urban centers to more vulnerable rural communities. The dire situation is expected to be "dramatically enhanced" by mass travel later this month for celebrations of the Lunar New Year on January 22.

Multiple modeling studies have suggested that China could see around 1 million deaths in the coming weeks as the country reopens amid a raging outbreak. Last month, modeling by The Economist estimated that 96 percent of China's 1.4 billion people could catch the virus within the next three months, resulting in 1.5 million deaths . Of those deaths, 90 percent would be among people aged 60 and over.  Another modeling study, partly funded by China's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also estimated that 957,600 would die in the coming weeks if the country doesn't swiftly roll out fourth-dose COVID-19 vaccines.

Because China was previously able to keep COVID-19 waves at bay with its zero-tolerance policies, most of the country's immune protection derives from vaccination rather than prior infection or hybrid protection. Around 90 percent of China's population has had two shots of COVID-19 vaccines, but fewer than 60 percent have received a third shot as a booster dose. And even for those who have gotten a third dose, many of those doses were taken months ago, and peak protection has passed. Vaccination coverage among the elderly is particularly worrying. About 30 percent of people aged 60 and over have not gotten a third dose, and for people aged 80 and over, a startling 60 percent have not gotten a third dose.

Enlarge / A woman watches white flags on the National Mall on September 18, 2021, in Washington, DC. Over 660,000 white flags were installed here to honor Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19. (credit: Getty | Chen Mengtong )

Without COVID-19 vaccines, the US would have seen four times more deaths from the pandemic virus—an additional 3 million lives lost—as well as nearly four times more hospitalizations, 1.5 times more infections, and an additional $1.5 trillion in medical bills since December of 2020.

Those are the top-line results from a new modeling study by the Commonwealth Fund , which simulated the unmitigated effects of COVID-19 in the US from December 2020 to November 2022.

The age-stratified model accounted for US demographics, the prevalence of disease-enhancing comorbidities, social networks, limited social contact during pandemic restrictions, COVID-19 case data, hospitalization rates, vaccination administration eligibility and rates, vaccine efficacy estimates, waning protection from vaccination and infection, and the characteristics of five SARS-CoV-2 variants (Iota, Alpha, Gamma, Delta, Omicron). The model was calibrated to replicate real-world data of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths before the researchers removed vaccines from the scenario.

Enlarge / US President Joe Biden receives the latest COVID-19 booster shot in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next to the White House, in Washington, DC, on October 25, 2022. (credit: Getty | Saul Loeb )

The Biden administration is struggling to refocus the country's attention back on the pandemic as the fall booster campaign drags and the latest models project that tens of thousands of Americans will needlessly die this winter of COVID-19.

“This year, nearly every [COVID-19] death is preventable," President Biden said Tuesday just before rolling up his sleeve to receive his own updated COVID-19 booster.

Few Americans are following his lead. The White House has pushed Halloween as a soft deadline for Americans to get their updated, bivalent COVID-19 booster, arguing that such timing of the dose will allow for the immune system to mount maximal antibody and other immune responses before Americans begin gathering for fall and winter holidays, such as Thanksgiving, when transmission risks increase. But, with Halloween just days away, only 19.4 million Americans have received a bivalent booster—that's just 6 percent of the people eligible for the shot, which is free and available to everyone ages 5 and above.

Enlarge / A thrown-away surgical mask lays on the ground. (credit: Getty | David Gannon )

As the wave of omicron coronavirus subvariant BA.5 continues to flood the US, daily COVID-19 hospitalizations are four times higher than four months ago, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The data reflects the high ongoing transmission of coronavirus subvariants adept at evading fading immune responses in a population that is largely unboosted.

In early April, as the US fell into a brief pandemic lull in the wake of the towering BA.1 omicron wave, the seven-day rolling average for new hospitalizations sunk to around 1,420 per day nationwide. Now, after waves of subvariants BA. 2, BA.2.12.1, and the current BA.5, hospitalizations have floated back up. The current seven-day rolling average is nearing 6,300. Overall, more than 37,000 people in the US are currently hospitalized with COVID-19.

Enlarge / A woman watches white flags on the National Mall on September 18, 2021 in Washington, DC. Over 660,000 white flags were installed here to honor Americans who have lost their lives to COVID-19 epidemic. (credit: Getty | Chen Mengtong )

COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in Americans between March 2020 and October 2021, accounting for one in every eight deaths.

In that time frame, COVID-19 ranked in the top five causes of death for every age group of people older than 15 years. Between January and October 2021, the pandemic disease was the leading cause of death among people 45 to 54 years old.

That's all according to a study of national death certificate data , published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine by researchers at the National Institutes of Health.

Enlarge / Mourners visit a memorial for victims of Tuesday's mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. (credit: Getty | Anadolu Agency )

In the wake of yet another preventable American gun violence tragedy—one that involved the slaughter of 21 people, including 19 children in a Texas elementary school—doctors, nurses , hospital administrators, health experts, and scientists are once again demanding a long-overdue, evidence-based public health response to the uniquely American public health crisis of gun violence.

This is " very much our lane ," Dr. Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told NBC.

She spoke vividly about the immediate impacts that AR-15-style weapons have on a human body—particularly the smallest ones. In the Uvalde, Texas school shooting this week, the gunman used an AR-15-style rifle (the Daniel Defense DDM4 V7 rifle), which he bought online. AR-15-style rifles are often used in mass shootings. They use a common military-caliber ammunition. The bullets don't always pass cleanly through flesh, but can instead become " unstable " and tumble, causing devastating damage that can leave victims unrecognizable and with an exceptionally low chance of survival.