Covid is out of control in the United States (almost 200,000 new infections in the last day!), affecting people who know its danger and - perhaps even more - those who don't. One of my students told me about an interview they saw with a nurse in South Dakota describing tense conversations with gravely ill patients about to be intubated who refuse to believe Covid is real and that they are dying. “It’s not one particular patient; it’s just a culmination of so many people and their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening, it’s not real.' And when they should be spending time FaceTime-ing their families, they’re just filled with anger and hatred. I just can’t believe those are their last words.”
Anger and, yes, hatred is what I feel towards those who have filled these heads with misinformation, but for these victims an aching compassion and mute sorrow. Denial is understandable. People they trusted lied to them about the danger, endangered them. And part of denying they have Covid - the nurse told of people who wanted to believe it was flu or even lung cancer - is denying that they caught it from someone, and that they may have passed it on to someone else.
I've thought a lot about about the loneliness and terror of those dying, in pain and isolation with no chance of the touch or even the presence of those they love, and about the grieving that hasn't been able fully to take place in response to these deaths, on every level from the personal (Joe Biden's empty chairs at the kitchen table) to the national. But another deep existential wound this pandemic will leave is the horror and shame of having potentially exposed another to a death-dealing virus. Too many of those who refuse masks and other measures don't know these feelings, but, sadly, will.
