This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find medical sources: Source guidelines · PubMed · Cochrane · DOAJ · Gale · OpenMD · ScienceDirect · Springer · Trip · Wiley · TWL

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17: 10 days

The contentious topics procedure applies to this page. This page is related to COVID-19, broadly construed, which has been designated as a contentious topic.

Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page.

WikiProject COVID-19 consensus

WikiProject COVID-19 aims to add to and build consensus for pages relating to COVID-19. They have so far discussed items listed below. Please discuss proposed improvements to them at the project talk page.

General

Superseded by TfD October 2020 and later practice - consult regular {{Current}} guidance.

Refrain from using Worldometer (worldometers.info) as a source due to common errors being observed as noted on the Case Count Task Force common errors page. (April 2020, April 2020)

For infoboxes on the main articles of countries, use Wuhan, Hubei, China for the origin parameter. (March 2020)

"Social distancing" is generally preferred over "physical distancing". (April 2020, May 2020)

Page title

COVID-19 (full caps) is preferable in the body of all articles, and in the title of all articles/category pages/etc.(RM April 2020, including the main article itself, RM March 2021).

SARS-CoV-2 (exact capitalisation and punctuation) is the common name of the virus and should be used for the main article's title, as well as in the body of all articles, and in the title of all other articles/category pages/etc. (June 2022, overturning April 2020)

Map

There is no consensus about which color schemes to use, but they should be consistent within articles as much as possible. There is agreement that there should be six levels of shading, plus gray for areas with no instances or no data. (May 2020)

There is no consensus about whether the legend, the date, and other elements should appear in the map image itself. (May 2020)

For map legends, ranges should use fixed round numbers (as opposed to updating dynamically). There is no consensus on what base population to use for per capita maps. (May 2020)

To ensure you are viewing the current list, you may wish to purge this page.

Other talk page banners

Section sizes

Section size for COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (36 sections)
Section name	Byte count	Section total
(Top)	23,486	23,486
Timeline	442	91,953
December 2019 to April 2020	19,494	19,494
May to August 2020	8,772	8,772
September to December 2020	10,962	10,962
January to April 2021	10,101	10,101
May to August 2021	6,758	6,758
September to November 2021	3,107	3,107
December 2021 to March 2022	1,962	1,962
April to June 2022	6,643	6,643
July to September 2022	2,846	2,846
October to December 2022	5,558	5,558
January to March 2023	3,455	3,455
April to June 2023	1,047	1,047
July to September 2023	5,001	5,001
October to December 2023	1,504	1,504
January to March 2024	4,301	4,301
Responses	20,385	20,385
Impacts	12	20,239
Economic	10,059	10,059
Social	6,989	6,989
Elections	3,019	3,019
Hospital care crisis	160	160
Vaccination campaign	1,680	7,637
Timeline graph of doses administered	1,130	1,130
Background to various vaccines	108	108
Vaccine mandates	2,854	2,854
Effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines	1,865	1,865
Transition to later phases	4,174	4,174
Preparations made after previous outbreaks	4,204	4,204
Statistics	116	116
See also	230	230
Notes	134	134
References	28	28
Further reading	2,556	2,556
External links	2,988	2,988
Total	178,130	178,130

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 6 January 2020 and 25 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Abarr256 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: LawrenceH2020, Marianneostos.

Text and/or other creative content from COVID-19 pandemic in the United States was copied or moved into Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States with this edit on July 22, 2020. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

This article has not yet been rated on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects.

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

COVID-19 Mid‑importance

	COVID-19 portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject COVID-19, a project to coordinate efforts to improve all COVID-19-related articles. If you would like to help, you are invited to join and to participate in project discussions.COVID-19Wikipedia:WikiProject COVID-19Template:WikiProject COVID-19COVID-19
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Current events

This article is part of WikiProject Current events, an attempt to expand and better organize information in articles related to current events. If you would like to participate in the project, visit the project page or contribute to the discussion.Current eventsWikipedia:WikiProject Current eventsTemplate:WikiProject Current eventsCurrent events

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Disaster management Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Disaster management, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Disaster management on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Disaster managementWikipedia:WikiProject Disaster managementTemplate:WikiProject Disaster managementDisaster management
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Medicine: Pulmonology Low‑importance

	Medicine portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Medicine, which recommends that medicine-related articles follow the Manual of Style for medicine-related articles and that biomedical information in any article use high-quality medical sources. Please visit the project page for details or ask questions at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine.MedicineWikipedia:WikiProject MedicineTemplate:WikiProject Medicinemedicine
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by the Pulmonology task force (assessed as Mid-importance).

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

United States: History / 50,000 Challenge High‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject U.S. history.
	This article was created or improved during this WikiProject's 50,000 Challenge, which started on November 1, 2016, and is ongoing. You can help!

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Viruses Low‑importance

	Viruses portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Viruses, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of viruses on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.VirusesWikipedia:WikiProject VirusesTemplate:WikiProject Virusesvirus
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Please add the quality rating to the {{WikiProject banner shell}} template instead of this project banner. See WP:PIQA for details.

Science Policy High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Science Policy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Science policy on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Science PolicyWikipedia:WikiProject Science PolicyTemplate:WikiProject Science PolicyScience Policy
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

This article has been viewed enough times in a single year to make it into the Top 50 Report annual list. This happened in 2020, when it received 19,707,145 views.

This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the Top 25 Report 9 times. The weeks in which this happened:

The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future:

Differential Effects of Intervention Timing on COVID-19 Spread in the United States (waiting for peer-reviewed version) - preprint with links to extensive press coverage e.g. At Least 54,000 U.S. Deaths Could Have Been Avoided If Lockdown Had Come Two Weeks Earlier

COVID-19 cases in the United States

We should use absolute numbers. Percentage numbers with so many zeros make no sense.

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate.•Shawnqual• 📚 • 💭 00:20, 20 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 31 July 2021

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

In the May to June 2021 section, please change "The rising numbers were believed to be attributed to the Delta variant" to either "The rising numbers were attributed to the Delta variant" or "The rising numbers were believed to be attributable to the Delta variant." As it stands, it is grammatically incorrect. 2001:BB6:4713:4858:5886:5A75:73F8:B0F2 (talk) 17:28, 31 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Tintinkien (talk) 09:32, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 11 August 2021 =

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

The sentence structure here isn't very good:

There have been increasing amounts of anti-vaccine rhetoric credited to the continuing culture war between the supporters and opponents of Donald Trump, while vaccination rates have been higher among self-identified Democrats and in counties that voted for Biden in 2020.

"while" should be used between contrasting things, like "it's been lower among Trump supporters, while Biden supporters have gotten more vaccinations." Also, the start of the sentence is a little wordy. Therefore, please change that sentence to:

Increasing amounts of anti-vaccine rhetoric have been credited to the continuing culture war between the supporters and opponents of Donald Trump. Vaccination rates have been higher among self-identified Democrats and in counties that voted for Biden in 2020.

Thank you. 64.203.186.91 (talk) 19:25, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: According to the page's protection level you should be able to edit the page yourself. If you seem to be unable to, please reopen the request with further details. @64.203.186.91: The text you wish to alter is being transcluded from the article COVID-19 vaccination in the United States via the {{Excerpt}} template. Said page is unprotected and so you may edit it freely. Happy editing! ––Sirdog9002 (talk) 19:55, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I've made the change. I'm surprised a page like that is unprotected! 64.203.186.91 (talk) 20:06, 11 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 19 August 2021

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

This sentence has a comma splice:

High levels of vaccine hesitancy in parts of the country have hampered vaccination efforts amidst the rise of the Delta variant,[30] this led to a fifth rise in infections, leading to daily cases surpassing 120,000 by August; the vast majority of new cases were among unvaccinated people.[27][31]

Just before [30], please replace the comma with a period, and capitalize the "this" that follows it. 64.203.186.98 (talk) 19:46, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Done ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 20:23, 19 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 24 August 2021

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please change

However, the number of available test kits remained limited, which meant the true number of people infected had to be estimated.

to

However, the number of available test kits remained limited.

The source for this sentence, [1], doesn't mention estimation. I've read the article and am not just relying on a no-results Control F search. 64.203.186.98 (talk) 15:16, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Done ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:48, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 30 August 2021

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please remove

However, Trump continued to promote the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 by late July.[155]

and add

However, Trump continued to promote the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 through late July.[155]

"by late July" makes it sound like he'd started doing something "by" that time, but the point of the sentence is that he was still doing it then. "through" shows that he was continuing to do it without saying whether or not he kept going after late July. 64.203.186.84 (talk) 17:04, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Done ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 18:40, 30 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Header Change

In the header: "and there were reported incidents of xenophobia and racism against Asian Americans" While this statement may have a citation, it's importance and magnitude is insignificant next to other highlights given in the header. COVID-19 has caused innumerable impacts on a wide variety of races and countries, why should this be particularly included in the header? Disproportionate death rates among minorities is a noteworthy highlight, but a viral headline from early on in the pandemic should not make the header.