Grappling with grief as U.S. COVID deaths surpass 1 million

Judy Woodruff:

As so many have said, it's impossible to fully convey the staggering toll of this COVID pandemic.

The statistical comparisons have certainly been noted. The deaths in the U.S. are roughly equal to losing as many people each day as we lost in the attacks of September 11, 2001, but for almost an entire year. It's also roughly equal to losing the entire populations of Boston and Pittsburgh.

But numbers describe just one part of this. And each life touches so many other lives.

Ed Yong of "The Atlantic" has been writing about this for more than two years. And he joins us again tonight.

Ed Yong, welcome back to the "NewsHour."

One of the things you mention is how different it is mourning these deaths is for mourning other deaths that occur and that we have known. And you speak — at one point, you spoke about the — because COVID ticked off so many risk factors.

What is that a reference to?

Ed Yong, "The Atlantic": So, the grief of many of the people who I have spoken to is incredibly prolonged, and it is what's called disenfranchised grief, which means that it's a loss that society doesn't really seem to acknowledge or validate.

Many of the people I have spoken to who've lost loved ones to COVID — and there are some estimated nine million across the country — never got to have the rituals that allow us to mourn our loved ones, to cope with loss.

Instead, they faced a barrage of insensitive and judgmental questions. How did your loved one get COVID? Didn't they have some sort of comorbidity? Weren't they old? And then, most recently, were they vaccinated or not?

All of these factors have pushed their grief below the surface to a place where they can't process it, they can't deal with it. So, they haven't been able to go out and about and try and live their normal lives. And, at this moment, when so much of this country's decided to go back to normal, it's as if this grief that has been placed in a time capsule has been released again, and so many of the people I have spoken to are sorrowful and raging all over again.

Judy Woodruff:

And you write — I mean, there's so much to ask you about, but you also write about how this mourning has affected COVID and mourning those we have lost has been different for different groups of people, for the elderly, for those with disabilities.

Ed Yong:

Yes.

The million deaths that have been recorded have not fallen across the country randomly. They have been disproportionately concentrated among elderly people, among sick, immunocompromised people, among Black and brown people, among poorer, low-income people.

And that has contributed to, I think, our normalization of those deaths. So, these were groups who were originally already marginalized before the pandemic happened, and they will continue to be marginalized in death, as well as in life.

Meanwhile, people who set the narrative, us in the media and political decision-makers, disproportionately don't fall into those groups. They had the earliest and easiest access to vaccines and other lifesaving measures. And they were quickest to then decide that the pandemic was over, without really grappling with the massive costs that the groups that I mentioned continue to face.

Judy Woodruff:

You mentioned the vaccines.

Did you see a difference in the reaction to the mourning over those who we lost before we had a vaccine, or who — who had been vaccinated, but still succumbed, as opposed to those who made the decision not to get vaccinated?

Ed Yong:

Oh, absolutely.

If you talk to people who lost a loved one since the vaccines came out, one of the most immediate questions they get is, were they vaccinated? And, sometimes, they will get that before hearing things like, I'm sorry for your loss, like just basic decent acts of compassion.

And that question about whether they were vaccinated casts judgment upon the death, forces them to justify the loss of their loved one and their grief.

In many cases, these were people who didn't have access to the vaccines, who still continue to not have access, despite them being readily available, for matters of time or effort. But there's also — people who — people who lost loved ones who decided not to get vaccinated, who bought into COVID misinformation, does that warrant a death sentence?

Does that mean that you cannot — you shouldn't be allowed to grieve someone who you lost? That person is still dead. That person still leaves behind people who are broken and who are mourning and who I think deserve the space and the grace to cope with their grief.

Judy Woodruff:

These are all questions we're all — we're all struggling with.

Ed Yong, one of the other points you make is it that in your talking to all these people who've lost a loved one to COVID, it's your observation that the so-called stages of grief are not what many people have been — have come to believe that they are, that there are five stages of grief, and they follow one after the other.

Ed Yong:

Yeah, that's not how grief works.

There aren't these discrete stages. They don't go in an orderly pattern. And, crucially, they don't always end in acceptance. This idea of grief leading to some kind of closure is a myth, and quite an unhelpful one in this stage.

Like I have said, many of the people who have lost loved ones to COVID, because their grief has been so prolonged, have gone through multiple cycles of these emotions. And they don't progress in the ways that society thinks that they should. And they certainly don't get over it really quickly.

We say — another myth that we have is that time heals everything. Time itself heals nothing. Time just gives you the opportunity to have the chances to learn ways of coping with that grief. And the pandemic denied people those chances because of the lack of mourning rituals, the lack of sympathy, the fact that the thing that killed their loved ones is on the news all the time and on people's lips.

That's not a recipe for learning how to deal with grief. It's a recipe for that grief to fester and stagnate, which is what we're seeing now. And that's why things like memorials, acts of national recognition are going to be so important for those nine million-plus people who have lost their loved ones.

Judy Woodruff:

And those memorials will continue. They are going to keep — keep coming. This pandemic is still very much with us.

Ed Yong, thank you very much.

Ed Yong:

Thanks for having me.