A pandemic atlas: USA by the numbers, telling and horrifying

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. But they don’t fully capture the multitude of ways, large and small, that the virus has upended and reconfigured everyday life in the U.S. For that, there are a host of other numbers. Some may be less familiar than others, yet all are just as telling in calculating the pandemic’s sweeping impact: Miles that Americans did not drive because they were unemployed, working or studying from home and traveling less: 35.3 billion School lunches and breakfasts that went unserved in March and April after schools were closed: 400 million Number of people participating in meetings on Zoom each day last December: 10 million Number of people participating daily in Zoom meetings by the end of March: 300 million Employment rate of low-wage workers as the year nears its end, compared to January: down 20.3 percent Employment rate of high-wage workers compared to January: up 0.2 percent Share of small businesses that are still closed even as the U.S. economy has reopened: 28.8 percent Drop in the number of passengers traveling on U.S. domestic flights this spring: 272.01 million, a decline of 76 percent. Dollars the international airline industry has lost this year: $118.5 billion Passengers screened by Transportation Security Administration agents at U.S. airports on April 14 last year: 2.21 million Passengers screened by the TSA on April 14 this year: 87,534 Number of TSA screening agents who have tested positive for COVID: 3,575 Number of TSA agents at New York’s John F. Kennedy International who have tested positive: 152 Number of people who went to a New York Broadway show during the first week of March: 253,453 Number of people who have been to a Broadway show since mid-March: 0 Number of jobs lost at New York City restaurants and bars between February and April: 233,751 Number of jobs regained at New York City restaurants and bars from April through September: 89,559 People who applied for a job at Amazon.com in a single week, after the online retailer announced a hiring fair to keep up with skyrocketing orders: 384,000 Payments to Americans by the Internal Revenue Service to help ease the pandemic’s economic fallout: 153.1 million checks and direct deposits through August, totaling $269.3 billion Americans’ spending on restaurants and hotels, compared to January: down 36.6 percent Americans’ spending on transportation, compared to January: down 50.9 percent Americans' spending on entertainment and recreation, compared to January: down 64.3 percent Americans' spending on groceries, compared to January: down 2.7 percent Total sales of alcoholic beverages during the pandemic: $62.5 billion, up 21.8 percent Online sales of alcohol in September compared to a year ago: up 256 percent Sales of tequila for home consumption in September and October, compared to a year ago: up 56 percent Champagne: up 71 percent Ready-to-drink cocktails: up 131 percent Production increase in bottles of Purell hand sanitizer this year: up 300 percent Number of Purell single-pump “doses” contained in bottles shipped to U.S. hospitals this year: 54 billion Dentists who closed their offices entirely, or to all but emergency patients, in April: 97.1 percent Dentists whose offices have reopened, but with fewer patients than usual: 65.6 percent Dentists who say they are seeing more patients who grind their teeth, usually an indicator of stress: 59.4 percent Games played during Major League Baseball’s regular season last year: 2,430 Fans who attended those games: 68,494,752 Games played during MLB’s shortened regular season this year: 898 Fans who attended those games: 0 ___ Sources: Federal Highway Administration; Sivak Applied Research; U.S. Government Accountability Office; Zoom Video Communications Inc.; Opportunity Insights using data from Womply, Affinity Solutions, Paychex Inc., Intuit Inc., Earnin and Kronos; Bureau of Transportation Statistics; International Air Transport Association; Transportation Security Administration; The Broadway League; Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; Amazon.com Inc.; Internal Revenue Service; The Nielsen Company; GOJO Industries; American Dental Association; Major League Baseball.