All the people who have denied the pandemic and those dismissing it as just a little bit worse than the flu and haranguing anyone who takes it seriously as being killjoys really need to read this. Five million of our fellow Americans are in a state of horrible grief and I would guess many more have more distant friends, colleagues and relatives who died in this thing. It’s a nightmare:
With nearly 600,000 in the U.S. lost to covid-19 — now a leading cause of death — researchers estimate that more than 5 million Americans are in mourning, including more than 43,000 children who have lost a parent.
The pandemic — and the political battles and economic devastation that have accompanied it — have inflicted unique forms of torment on mourners, making it harder to move ahead with their lives than with a typical loss, said sociologist Holly Prigerson, co-director of the Cornell Center for Research on End-of-Life Care.
The scale and complexity of pandemic-related grief have created a public health burden that could deplete Americans’ physical and mental health for years, leading to more depression, substance misuse, suicidal thinking, sleep disturbances, heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure and impaired immune function.
“Unequivocally, grief is a public health issue,” said Prigerson, who lost her mother to covid in January. “You could call it the grief pandemic.”
The stories recounted are heartbreaking. And it’s not just the people over 60 (who many people have made very clear they believe are totally expendable anyway) these are stories of younger people with kids still at home and others who were vital members of their families. The way they died alone in the hospital, sometimes very quickly, with no family there makes it an exceptionally cruel disease.
All of us whose families made it through should count our lucky stars and be grateful. This is a terrible burden for a whole lot of people.