By the time you read this column, the number of coronavirus-related deaths confirmed in Indian River County almost certainly will have reached triple figures.
There were only 22 on July 16.
That means the COVID-connected deaths of more than 75 of our relatives, friends and neighbors were reported by health officials over the past seven weeks, including 53 last month.
No one, though, seems to care.
No one appears to be alarmed, or concerned, or to even have noticed that so many members of our small seaside community, and our often forgotten neighbor, the little farm town of Fellsmere, have been taken from us by the coronavirus. Nobody is talking about it, and nobody seems to want to.
Which begs the question: Why?
Is it because we’re suffering from COVID-19 fatigue, which has left many of us emotionally and psychologically worn down by the stress of living through an ongoing global pandemic, and so we ease our minds by telling ourselves the virus is no longer a threat?
Is it because we’ve been told most of the people killed by this virus are in their 70s, 80s or 90s, had pre-existing health issues and/or probably weren’t expected to live much longer anyway? Does this make it easier for us to dismiss their deaths?
Or is it because every cable news network has spent the past six months keeping a running tally of the nation’s COVID-19 cases and deaths – displaying those numbers non-stop on our TV screens, as if they were stock-market indexes – numbing our senses to the point where we see only statistics and not the lost lives they represent?
My guess is, all of those factors have contributed mightily to an “oh, well” acceptance of our unprecedented circumstances, and a quiet reluctance to think about the people who’ve died, how they died and the impact of their deaths on their families and friends.
That saddens me.
What’s happening – the COVID-related deaths of people who otherwise would still be alive – isn’t normal. Dying alone in a hospital bed, left to say your final goodbyes to loved ones by phone or FaceTime, because the threat of infection prohibits family members from being at your side, is not normal
Let’s not pretend that it is.
Likewise, let’s not be so callous as to pretend that the advanced ages of many of COVID’s victims here, where half of those who’ve succumbed to the virus were living in long-term-care facilities, makes their deaths more tolerable or any less devastating.
Even if these men and women – parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters – would’ve lived only a few months longer, this cruel intruder robbed them of that time with family and friends.
Besides, COVID-19 has killed younger people, too, including many in their 50s and 60s.
At any age, life is precious, and each COVID death should be considered an individual tragedy – a reality that too often and too easily gets lost.
That’s why we need to pause, if only for a few moments, and look beyond the statistics and graphs used to show us the big picture of this pandemic. We need to share the pain that accompanies the loss of each life. We need to put faces to the numbers.
We need to reconnect to our humanity.
When someone here is murdered, or drowns, or dies in an automobile or boating accident, the impact resonates throughout the community. We’re jolted by the headlines. Our stomachs churn as we learn the details. We mourn the unexpected loss of life and empathize with the family.
Depending on the circumstances, we can feel awful for days, even weeks – the price of living in a Mayberry-like community where so many of us know each other.
Why, then, don’t we feel it now, as the coronavirus continues to kill so many of our friends and neighbors?
Many psychologists interviewed during the COVID-19 pandemic say people tend to absorb the loss of life in large numbers by becoming desensitized to the deaths. Or to put it more bluntly: The more people die, the less we care.
That appears to be what has happened here, where so many of us see only numbers and not people.
Which is sad and diminishes us.