"More Americans have perished from COVID-19 than on battlefields of World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined."

The New York Times' front page on Sunday showed a visual representation of the totality of COVID's devastation in the US as the nation approaches half a million deaths.

Half of the front page was dedicated to the graphic, with nearly a 500,000 dots running down the length of the page and across three of its six columns.

In the graphic, each of the individual dots represents a life lost in the country to the coronavirus. 

"A nation numbed by misery and loss is confronting a number that still has the power to shock: 500,000," the New York Times said

"From afar, the graphic on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times looks like a blur of gray, a cloudy gradient that slowly descends into a block of solid ink. Up close, it shows something much darker: close to 500,000 individual dots, each representing a single life lost in the United States to the coronavirus, signifying a staggering milestone that the nation is reaching in just under 12 months," the Times said in a behind the scenes feature.

“The fact that we can create something with half a million dots that is visible and readable all in one piece, on one sheet of paper, that people can scan and ponder — it’s made for print, in a way. It seems natural for the front page,” said Bill Marsh, a print graphics coordinator who helped oversee the execution.

“There is just a certain numbness, I think, that is normal human nature when this has been going on for so long, but we’ve tried to just keep reminding people of what is still going on,” Lauren Leatherby, one of the graphic editors at The Times said. “And I think something striking about this particular piece that we were trying to drive home is just the sheer speed at which it was all happening.”

In May, 2020, when COVID deaths in the US reached 100,000, the Times also dedicated its front page and three inside pages filled with names of about one thousand victims.