What have we learned during the coronavirus pandemic ... And what have we refused to learn ?
Program Success 3 Fall 2020
200,000 American Are Dead !
What have we learned during the coronavirus pandemic ... And what have we refused to learn ?
At some point in 1993 , the two-hundred-thousandth American died of AIDS . By that time , a decade had passed since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first described the emergence of a mysterious new syndrome . Freddie Mercury and Arthur Ashe had died of the virus , and Magic Johnson had announced his retirement from the N . B . A . Tom Hanks was soon to win an Oscar for his role as an H . I . V . -positive gay man , in “ Philadelphia .” Still , the tragic milestone passed without much notice .
H . I . V . had become the leading cause of death among young American men , but researchers and activists were still fighting to raise awareness about the virus , and acceptance for the people who were suffering from it . Two years earlier , the hundred-thousandth American had died of AIDS . That death was announced in a short article on page eighteen of the Times , which dispassionately reviewed statistics and projections . extraordinary loss of life any easier to fathom . In less than a year , COVID-19 has killed four times as many Americans as died from the opioid crisis during its deadliest year . It has killed more Americans than those who perished in every armed conflict combined since the Second World War . Globally , it has killed nearly a million people .
Reckoning with such a number , we might try to imagine the dead as individuals . Though the virus is worse for those who are older , people of all ages have died , and of all races , backgrounds , trades , and political persuasions . Each life lost was embedded in a web of relations . According to one estimate , each person who dies of COVID-19 leaves behind an average of nine surviving family members . If this is right , then there are now at least 1.8 million Americans mourning the loss of kin - parents , husbands , wives , children , siblings , grandparents - and millions more who are mourning with them .
The novel coronavirus has now claimed over 200,000 American life . Less than eight months have passed since the start of the pandemic . There hasn ’ t been time to make a movie about it , and there ’ s been no need to raise awareness ; the toll of the virus is tracked daily , even hourly , across the country and across the world . But that doesn ’ t make the
Meanwhile , as a doctor , when I think of two hundred thousand lost lives , I think of the ones I wasn ’ t able to save while caring for patients in the early days of the outbreak in New York . I think of the couples transferred hand in hand to the hospice unit ; of a parent comforting young children through FaceTime ;