ON MAY 27, the United States reached a grim milestone. Four months after the country’s first confirmed case of covid-19, the death toll of the novel coronavirus reached 100,047 as of 6 p.m. Eastern Time, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The number — far higher than any other nation’s — exceeded the number of U.S. lives lost to the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks combined.
We hoped the alarming loss of so many lives in so short a period of time would galvanize a concerted national effort to contain the virus. Instead, two months later, 50,000 more people are dead, and there is no end in sight to the casualties.
“It is what it is,” President Trump said when asked about the death count by Fox News interviewer Chris Wallace. The rest of us must not be so indifferent. It is more important than ever to recognize, to remember and to honor the people who have died.
People such as Joseph J. Costa, 56, head of intensive care at Baltimore’s Mercy Medical Center, who kept working despite a compromised immune system because he knew he was needed. Nick Cordero, 41, the Broadway talent whose three-month battle with the virus was chronicled in heartbreaking detail by his wife. Kimora Lynum, just 9 years old, who loved video games and delighted in shopping trips with her mom. Carol Krieger, 80, a retired teacher who thrived on the challenge of working with children who had survived severe trauma.
The outbreak has had a disproportionate impact on Black people, Hispanics and Native Americans. Among those lost: Erica McAdoo, 39, who joined the Los Angeles Police Department to serve her community; Marlene Sekaquaptewa, 79, a political leader in the Hopi Tribal Government whose quilts are works of art; Adrian Gomez, 52, who worked at a shelter on the Texas border that housed and educated migrant children seeking asylum; Gregori V. Armstrong, 66, a Chicago ironworker who for four decades helped build the city.
Samantha Diaz, a 29-year-old medical assistant in Florida, left behind three young children, two of whom had also contracted the coronavirus. Ms. Diaz’s mother had to quit her job to care for the children. “Our world,” she said, “came crashing down.” In Michigan, the deaths of both of their parents left Nanssy, Nadeen and Nash Ismael — 13, 18, 20, respectively — struggling not just with grief but also with figuring out how to buy food and pay bills.
When it came time for family members of Isabelle Odette Hilton Papadimitriou, 64, to write the obituary for the respiratory therapist, who contracted the virus while seeing patients in Texas, they didn’t pull any punches. “Like hundreds and thousands of others, [Isabelle] should still be alive today. Her undeserving death is due to the carelessness of the politicians who continue to hedge their bets on the lives of health care workers through a lack of leadership, through a refusal to acknowledge the severity of this crisis, and through an inability and unwillingness to give clear and decisive direction on how to minimize the risks of the coronavirus.” Exactly, heartbreakingly true.
Read more:
