PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) After mass shootings killed and wounded people grocery shopping, going to church and simply living their lives last weekend, the nation marked a milestone of 1 million deaths from COVID-19. The number, once unthinkable, is now an irreversible reality in the United States just like the persistent reality of gun violence that kills tens of thousands of people every year.

Americans have always tolerated high rates of death and suffering among certain segments of society. But the sheer numbers of deaths from preventable causes, and the apparent acceptance that no policy change is on the horizon, raises the question: Has mass death become accepted in America?

I think the evidence is unmistakable and quite clear. We will tolerate an enormous amount of carnage, suffering and death in the U.S., because we have over the past two years. We have over our history, says Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist and professor at Yale who, before that, was a leading member of the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP.

If I thought the AIDS epidemic was bad, the American response to COVID-19 has sort of ... its a form of the American grotesque, right? Gonsalves says. Really a million people are dead? And youre going to talk to me about your need to get back to normal, when for the most part most of us have been living pretty reasonable lives for the past six months?

Certain communities have always borne the brunt of higher death rates in the United States. There are profound racial and class inequalities in the United States, and our tolerance of death is partly based on who is at risk, says Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota who studies mortality.

Some peoples deaths matter a lot more than others, she laments. And I think thats what were seeing in this really brutal way with this coincidence of timing.

In Buffalo, the alleged shooter was a racist bent on killing as many Black people as he could , according to authorities. The family of 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, one of 10 people killed there in an attack on a grocery store that served the African American community , channeled the grief and frustration of millions as they demanded action, including passage of a hate crime bill and accountability for those who spread hateful rhetoric .