(New York) Dean Russel knows full well that there is a story behind every COVID-19 death.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
Since the spring of 2020, this 33-year-old New Yorker has participated in the Missing Them project, the objective of which is to write and publish an obituary for each resident of the American metropolis killed by SARS-CoV-2.
“We found that most of the public obituaries were for white men and for the wealthier enclaves of the city,” recalls Dean Russell, who leads the Missing Them team on an interim basis for the news site. local The City and its partners, including the Columbia University School of Journalism.
“Obviously, that’s not how the coronavirus was killing people. The coronavirus was killing twice as many blacks and Latinos as white residents. »
Nearly two years later, the Missing Them team has written more than 2,600 obituaries, the result of patient and delicate journalistic work. Originally, the team could never have believed that such a number would represent only a fraction of the approximately 40,000 New Yorkers who have died from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.
Nor could she have guessed that the number of coronavirus victims would one day reach one million in the United States.
During his childhood in Ecuador, José Jaramillo, one of these victims, used to point to the sky and exclaim, when he saw a plane: “One day, I will take this plane to New York! »
“He came to New York, he got married, he had several children, he made his life in New York, before dying of COVID-19 at 69,” says Dean Russell, who collected the story of the Queens resident with one of his daughters.
The balance sheet of the COVID-19, “that’s it times a million”, he says.
Preventable deaths
In fact, the United States won’t reach that number until late March or early April, according to data from the benchmark Johns Hopkins University. As of Friday, just over 956,000 deaths linked to COVID-19 had been recorded.
Many Americans will not fail to meditate, their hearts knotted with sadness, when the symbolic threshold of one million will be reached. But others will not escape a sense of frustration or even anger at the thought of all the Americans who died needlessly.
Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College in Houston, will think in particular of his compatriots who have succumbed to COVID-19 since 1er May 2021, after the appearance of the Delta and Omicron variants.
“This date is significant because it sort of marks the official start of universal access to vaccination against COVID-19,” he says. And all those lives lost after the 1er may mainly concern unvaccinated people. If you look at that million deaths, about the last third or more were preventable. »
The Dr Hotez calls “simplistic” the idea that this “horrific tragedy” is attributable to Americans’ greater tolerance of death.
Those 300,000 or more people who died after vaccines became available were individuals who were deliberately targeted. They have been the victims of particular targeting by the American far right.
Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College
The infectious disease expert blames a handful of Republican congressmen, the hosts of prime-time Fox News shows, conservative state governors and some nonconformist intellectuals.
“I no longer call what they conveyed disinformation or misinformation. I call it anti-science aggression, ”denounces the Dr Hot.
Paradoxically, the United States is approaching its millionth death from COVID-19 just as the pandemic seems set to loosen its grip on the country. Since the end of the Omicron wave, many states or localities, including the most democratic such as California and New York, have announced the end of several measures put in place to fight the spread of the virus, including the wearing of mandatory mask.
“Inevitable complacency”
Ogbonnaya Omenka, a professor at Butler University in Indiana, sees in both politicians and ordinary people an “inevitable complacency that follows every threat to public health”.
However, the threat could well return, according to him. “Because this complacency is a bit premature, like when you shout victory before the last seconds,” says the public health specialist. “On the other hand, the threat may not return. »
The Dr Have doubts. He points out that a large part of the world is not yet vaccinated and that other variants could emerge from low- and middle-income countries.
I also expect another big surge over the summer in the Southern states and Texas, just like we had in 2020 and 2021. The bottom line is that the American people are ready for it.
Peter Hotez, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College
Denis Nash’s fear is that the American people are not ready, even after a million deaths from COVID-19.
“The thing that comes to mind as this very sad milestone approaches is that we weren’t as well prepared as we should have been to take on the Delta and Omicron variants,” says Prof. epidemiology at the City University of New York.
“And I see the same scenario playing out again. There’s a lot of effort these days to get rid of sanitary restrictions, and maybe that’s appropriate. But I would feel much better if I felt like our leaders at all levels of government also had a very solid and clear plan for how to deal with a next wave that many of us see as very likely. . »
However, while awaiting the millionth death from COVID-19 in the United States, the Dr Nash is not convinced that such a plan exists.
And the Missing Them team may never be able to complete their mission.