The United States has approached the milestone of 100.000 deaths caused due to coronavirus, the New York Times has paid tribute to them by filling the entire front page of Sunday’s paper with the death notices of victims from across the country.
In today’s front page of New York Times, it intended to convey the vastness and variety of the tragedy, the front page is a simple list of names and personal details taken from obituaries around the US.
The entire list, which continues inside, numbers nearly 1,000 names – a fraction of the total loss of life in the US during the outbreak so far.
The US death toll stands at more than 97,000, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker, by far the highest in the world, and the Times said it had been considering how to mark expected milestone of 100,000 deaths.
In an article for Times Insider, assistant graphics editor Simone Landon explained the treatment was a way of personalising the tragedy as readers and staff developed data fatigue from the constant reporting of the pandemic.
Landon led a team of researchers in searching obituaries in hundreds of US newspapers that listed Covid-19 as the cause of death and extracting names and key personal details “that depicted the uniqueness of each life lost”, such as: “Alan Lund, 81, Washington, conductor with ‘the most amazing ear”.
Monday in the US is Memorial Day, the traditional start of the American summer, and some experts fear that the return of warmer weather combined with a loosening of lockdowns around the country could trigger a deadly second wave of the coronavirus.