N.Y. Times runs infographic with nearly 500,000 individual dots — one for each U.S. COVID death

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The New York Times ran a stunning visual representation of the number of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. as the country approaches the half a million victim mark.

The page, which is available as a PDF here, was originally created for the Times’ digital platforms in late January 2021, created by graphics editors Lazaro Gamio and Lauren Leatherby.

“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 newspaper wrote in a note to readers.

The graph occupied roughly half of the front page on Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021 — spanning three columns wide and stretching from the base of the flag to top of the promo boxes that run along the bottom.

In April 2020, The New York Times ran a smaller coronavirus infographic with a spike that extended up into the flag and over the iconic logo.