People mourn loss of those due to COVID-19, as US death toll nears 400K

The United States is fast approaching another staggering point in the pandemic. The coronavirus death toll will soon reach 400,000 people. Those are our family, friends and neighbors. We spoke to people who feel the losses deeply.

Lately, many people’s lives revolve around avoiding death due to COVID-19.

Kit Kerkesner won’t leave his home. His fears for contracting the virus are real.

“It was my biggest worry,” Kerkesner said. “I didn’t want to get it. I didn’t want my wife or any of her family to get it.

For Peg Boyle, living doesn’t feel like living at all.

“This is the first time I wasn’t with my children on Christmas,” Boyle said. “That was pretty bad. All I did was cry all day.”

The most vulnerable among us are desperately avoiding death and bravely facing reality.

“If I get the coronavirus, I will die and my husband probably too,” Boyle said. “Just our age alone. We’re both 72, and I don’t want to die.”

“I think that’s what’s panicking people,” Kerkesner said. “They don’t want to be the last one to die before the shot for everybody else takes effect. I’m one of those.”

Grandmas and grandpas. Moms and dads. Sons and daughters. Friends and co-workers. We’ve lost nearly 400,000 of them.

“Oh, I do care about them; I just do,” Boyle said. “I just feel as though this shouldn’t be happening. This is worse than 9/11.”

Kerkesner counts himself lucky. He lost one friend among the hundreds of thousands.

“It was like damn; it could happen to anybody,” he said.

Every one of them was with us before this pandemic. Each one will not be with us as we look toward the hope to come out of it, but that is why many of people are saying we must fight our way out.

“I don’t look at them as just numbers,” Christine Landry said. “I look at them that this pandemic has destroyed families.”

“It made me think more in a compassionate way because we are not alone, definitely, and how our actions affect others,” Luda Lima said.

It’s why Kerkesner waited 17 hours for a shot in the arm.

It’s why Boyle stays home.

“But I don’t think it’s my turn to die because I made I through lung cancer and everything else,” Boyle said.

Almost 400,000 deaths later, we have learned more than ever how precious it is to live.

“My children, that’s the main thing,” Boyle said. “My family. My husband. My children.”

MORE: COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)