Vaccine comes too late for the 300,000 US dead The real number of lives lost is believed to be much higher, in part because of deaths that were not accurately recorded as coronavirus-related during the early stages of the crisis When Brittany Palomo was hired as a nurse in March, her parents tried to talk her out of it, fearful of the fast-spreading coronavirus. All the more reason, she told them, to start the career that had been her long-held dream. The pandemic, though, is a nightmare — one that has now claimed 300,000 lives in the U.S. and counting. “Wake up, my little girl, wake up!” Palomo’s mother,