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.
The novel coronavirus is about to claim its two-hundred-thousandth American life. (It may already have done so; statistics lag.) 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 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. 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; of an elderly man worrying about using a ventilator that might be needed by someone younger. Continue reading.