The United States has recorded a total death toll of 20,071, surpassing Italy's death toll of 19,468. It's now among the worst-hit countries by the novel coronavirus outbreak. and the situation does not seem to be getting better.?
To give you a sense of just how grim things are, renowned US journalist, Julio Ricardo Varela - who is also the host of In The Thick -?shared a video of the obituary section in Boston Globe newspaper. Varela wrote, 'The death notices of today's Sunday ?@BostonGlobe? are 11 pages long. #COVID19 #Massachusetts'.
The obituary section in the daily ran up to a whopping 11 pages in the face of the pandemic; in the tweet thread, Varela clarified that not all deaths were owing to COVID-19, but that majority of them were.?
He added that this is the worst he has witnessed since the 9/11 terror attacks, which at the time hogged most of the newspapers' obituary section, and now it's the novel coronavirus.?
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Varela wrote, 'The notices in today's Sunday @BostonGlobe represent 127 cities and towns across all of #Massachusetts, mostly Eastern Mass. It also includes notices from 14 other states (33 total) and 2 notices from outside of US (Greece and Venezuela) of lost lives with connections to Mass'.
'And the Globe is running daily death notices. For example, last Wednesday's paper had 5 pages.Tuesday has 4 pages.Saturday was 1 page', he added on Twitter.?
A similar clip of an Italian newspaper went viral last month.?On March 13, a daily newspaper L'Eco di Bergamo released an issue which had 10 pages of obituaries. A Twitter user with the handle David Carretta posted a video of the paper.
Reuters?
In the viral clip, the February 9 edition had only one page dedicated to obituaries, with photos of the deceased filling another half page. Whereas on March 13, the obituaries took 10 full pages of the newspaper.
According to Reuters, the United States has seen its highest death tolls to date in the epidemic with roughly 2,000 deaths a day reported for the last four days in a row.?
Public health experts have warned that the U.S. death toll could reach 200,000 over the summer if unprecedented stay-at-home orders that have closed businesses and kept most Americans indoors, are lifted after 30 days.