[conspire] Remember, remember, the Fifth of November

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

On Nov 5, 2020, at 13:20, paulz at ieee.org wrote:
> 
>  If my numbers are correct, COVID19 has now claimed more American lives and all of the US military conflicts since WWII.   Aren't each of those people as precious to their friends and families?  Many didn't have anyone to hold their hand in their last hour on a ventilator.  

I believe you are correct on that point, but it is actually the last line that is the issue, I think.

As someone who was widowed once upon a time, the single most common reaction to suddenly having my husband die of a stroke was, “But I just saw him!”

As if somehow that meant magically he’d appear.

Just my experience as a widow, given Americans’ attitude about death and how unreal it is to most people, just making it so they can’t personally see it makes it even less real. Also, covid is taking weeks (or in some cases, months) to kill people. Average hospital stay is around three weeks, at which point a lot of people have just…moved on and forgotten if they’re not super close to someone.

The fact that many people are asymptomatic, asymptomatically spreading, in the hospital in quarantine, or in quarantine/trying to avoid catching it at home has made it far more invisible to a lot of people.

It just doesn’t have the Life magazine covers the Viet Nam war did, you know? Which…these days, those are suuuuper cringeworthy.

https://www.vintag.es/2020/10/vietnam-war-life-covers.html <https://www.vintag.es/2020/10/vietnam-war-life-covers.html>

(Also, if you didn’t know, quite a few people around the world call it The American War, at least informally.)

Deirdre
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