A Reality of Suffering - the Pain of the Families of the Victims of COVID-19

The sadness, the pain, the despair, the suffering - the Novel Coronavirus, via its COVID-19 disease, has casted a reality of the carnage of death upon humanity that has resulted in more than one-million people dead worldwide as infectious cases approach a staggering 33.5-million people. 

United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has described the million-plus pandemic deaths as a "mind-numbing" figure and "an agonizing milestone" for humanity.

As empathetic humanity mourns the dear departed COVID-19 victims, the dreaded reality of the destructive disruption to human life posed by the pandemic is borne in the gut-churning sadness, pain, shock and despair evident in the eyes of masked grieving family members of those who have died. 

Earlier today, the BBC-News on its news website across America, featured a photograph of two Indian girls and two women - all masked and grieving for a loved one -  a victim of COVID-19, yet, even with their facial coverings, their eyes, especially those of a young lady wearing yellow, epitomized the sadness, the pain, the despair and the emptiness felt by loved ones following a COVID-19 death of a family member. The COVID-19 pandemic is real and proving a huge grief-maker for far too many people.  

The United States (US), India, Brazil and Russia now account for more than half of all global COVID-19 infections. The US has 205,476 disease deaths thus far from a still rising 7,159,222 COVID-19 infections, according to data at the time of writing supplied by Johns Hopkins University (JHU). India's total infections of 6,145,291 stand as a ballooning figure with a comparable reported low death count of 96,318 people. And across Europe, the US, Mexico and South America, there are signs of increasing infections.

As the World Health Organization (WHO) continues to urge global collaboration  to mitigate and to push back against the Novel Coronavirus, the organization admits that the virus is "suppressible". International cooperation, social distancing and wearing facial masks are a few elements that could help in pushing back against the pandemic. 

But in the US, mixed messaging on the virus from President Donald Trump has hindered containing the disease across the many states. Among many other things, Trump's apparent opposition to facial masks has politicized COVID-19. And with the bleak projection from the University of Washington that some 370,000 Americans could die from COVID-19 by year-end, a more concerted national effort against the disease is in demand. According to the University of Washington, if 95% of Americans wear facial masks in public, then that grim 370,000 deaths could be reduced to 273,000.