A year ago, covid-19 had killed just a handful of people in the United States. Now, the pandemic’s official death toll equals the size of a major city, more than the population of Kansas City, Mo., and nearly as many as Atlanta or Sacramento.

It can be hard to grasp the enormity — almost half a million people, gone. What if we imagined them traveling as one group? Or killed in action? Or all buried together?

If 500,000 passengers traveled by bus …

An average motor coach — the kind of bus you would take from one city to another — holds 50 people. Transporting only the number of people who died last month would require dozens of buses.

In January, the deadliest month of the pandemic, an average of 3,100 people died every day of covid-19.

A caravan of buses containing that many passengers would span more than half a mile.