From PBS NewsHour <[email protected]>
Subject Where do we go from here?
Date May 14, 2022 4:01 PM
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What was once deemed unthinkable has happened: We’ve now seen 1 million lives lost to COVID.

Photo by Leah Millis/Reuters

Reflecting on a million deaths

We’ve now seen 1 million lives lost to COVID.

Since March 2020, the PBS NewsHour has documented how the virus – and the government’s response to it – has been felt in communities, big and small. And at the 1 million mark, we’re still examining why the U.S. has suffered such a terrible loss. Here are some of the highlights from our reporting:
* In memoriam. We remembered several lives ([link removed]) lost to COVID. Among them are a correctional officer, the co-owner of a beloved bakery, an opera singer, and a grandfather who loved to sing, whether in his church choir or just answering the phone.
* Our collective loss, by the numbers. A majority of Americans – 52 percent – said they know someone who died from the disease, according to a NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll ([link removed]) . The increase in COVID deaths last year was a major reason why 2021 was the deadliest year in U.S. history ([link removed]) .

* Amid this staggering loss, more than 215,000 children in the U.S. have lost their primary parent or caregiver ([link removed]) to COVID. In Louisiana, Communities Correspondent Roby Chavez reports on how doctors are pushing to get these children the care they need ([link removed]) .
* The global death toll has reached nearly 15 million people, capturing those who died from the impact of COVID ([link removed]) both directly and indirectly, according to the World Health Organization.
* How vaccines became so partisan. Correspondent William Brangham looks at how misinformation and the partisan divide drove a surge in COVID deaths ([link removed]) in the country.
* At least a quarter of the deaths were avoidable. Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, told the NewsHour that if people had been vaccinated to a much greater extent right now, about 250,000 deaths could have been avoided ([link removed]) .
* And yet, “COVID is not done with us.” Ed Yong, a staff writer at The Atlantic, noted back in March how top leadership keeps pushing a narrative ([link removed]) that’s centered around personal choices, whether individuals had decided to get vaccinated or not. “If you cast the crisis in that light, as entirely a matter of people failing or succeeding and doing things to protect themselves, then it makes their deaths easier to dismiss,” he said, adding that we, as a society, should “take stock of how our collective failings led to this now almost one million deaths.”

NUMBERS AREN’T ENOUGH TO TELL THIS STORY OF MASS LOSS
Illustration by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour
By Laura Santhanam, @LauraSanthanam ([link removed])
Health Reporter & Coordinating Producer for Polling

What was once deemed unthinkable has happened: More than 1 million people in the U.S. have died of COVID. For the many and growing number of Americans who are grieving, the weight of this grim milestone cannot be expressed by statistics alone ([link removed]) .

On any given day, a person usually practices more fast thinking (quick, intuitive decisions based on gut reactions to images and impressions) than slow thinking (analysis grounded in logic, reason and science). That reliance on fast thinking is a survival mechanism. But it also erodes our ability to understand loss and human suffering in orders of magnitude.

Research suggests that when one person suffers or dies, that yields the most profound sense of grief. But our ability to comprehend that suffering does not scale up with each additional person’s loss, said Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon. “As numbers increase, we lose feelings.”

Statistics about death and suffering, whether tied to COVID or war or famine, “[bounce] off of us while conveying little meaning or emotion, compared to when we know someone who has had the disease or we have first-hand information about individuals who are suffering,” a phenomenon called psychic numbing, Slovic said.
A woman in her personal protective equipment (PPE) gear holds the hand of a COVID-positive patient at a hospital in Rexburg, Idaho. Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

To counter the tendency to become desensitized to grim milestones, social worker and grief counselor Melissa Sellevaag said it is critically important to remember that “every single one of these numbers is a person who was loved by somebody.”

People in mourning often “feel like the world is moving on and [theirs] has stopped,” Sellevaag said. She tells them that when someone dies, you don’t get over it – you learn to live with it. You need to talk about your person and share your memories with others. Grief comes in waves, she said, and learning how to cope with that grief ([link removed]) is a nonlinear process.

Grief is raw and fresh for preschool teacher Genevieve Larrañaga. She still struggles with talking in the past tense about her husband and father of their teenage sons, Edward Larrañaga, who died of COVID on March 3. Now, her family carries his memory and painful questions about how he spent his final moments of life since COVID protocols prevented them from being together.
Genevieve Larrañaga met Edward, the man who would become her husband and father of their two sons, in high school after their respective prom dates ditched them. They were inseparable for decades. Edward died from COVID this winter. Photos courtesy of Genevieve Larrañaga

“This is not just a number. These are real people who had real lives and were thriving. They’re dearly missed,” Larrañaga said through tears.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
By Joshua Barajas, @Josh_Barrage ([link removed])
Senior Editor, Digital

In the last two years, people across the country have displayed paper hearts, roses, chairs, flags and murals to capture the scope of the escalating death toll ([link removed]) . An artist in Tulsa, Oklahoma, made tiny, white crosses and pressed them into the field of a local church. Each cross marked one death in the state, but the number rose so quickly he, at times, was unable to keep up ([link removed]) .

As the U.S. approached 1 million lives lost to the pandemic, Biden made remarks at a global pandemic summit, the White House lowered its flags to half-staff and members of Congress held a moment of silence. But there has yet to be a national day of mourning ([link removed]) or a permanent memorial or place to put our shared national grief ([link removed]) .
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Throughout the pandemic, the NewsHour connected with many people across the nation to help us make sense of this tragedy. We reached back out ([link removed]) to several of them – a nurse, single mom, sister, daughter and student, among them – for their reflections on this moment and what they hope for what comes next.

Adam Bliden, who we first spoke with ([link removed]) in April 2020, is a paramedic in Piermont, New York.

“I don't think a single one of us was ready for the cost of working through this,” he said of the mental and physical toll of being on the frontline. “It's a hard job to begin with. Always wondering, ‘Is this going to be the one that gets me?’ If every little cold, every little sneeze is going to lead to being out of work, to be laid up, yeah, it's hard.”

“Something told me in the very beginning of this pandemic that it was not going to be quick and it was not going to be easy. I'm not surprised that we hit a million,” he added. “To think about one person who I know who died of this would be unfair to the rest.”

This newsletter was produced by Joshua Barajas ([link removed]) .
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