A tipping point was made in the United States this week, roughly the 9th Week of the COVID-19 Pandemic social isolation and shutdown measures being implemented in my state to help “lessen the curve” of new cases of COVID-19 and deaths related to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Today, May 13, 2020 — all “official” sources tracking the fatalities in the United States from the Corona Virus pandemic are all reporting that death toll has surpassed 80,000 lives as of May 12th.

To put that into perspective, according to the Statistica website the average death rate across the United States on any given day in 2019 from all causes of death was 7,969.7 (1) According to the UVA COVID-19 surveillance dashboard, the total number of deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States to Date is 83,353 (2) So in essence, the United States COVID-19 pandemic death rate is so far equivalent to 10.45 days of the average daily US Death rate.

The lives lost were more than numbers, more than statistics, more than partisan talking points reflecting the effectiveness or incompetence of the national, state or local government’s response to the pandemic.

Our brothers, our sisters, our mothers, our fathers, our grandmothers, our grandfathers, our cousins, our nieces, our nephews, our spouses, our friends, our co-workers, our loved ones are among those numbers tallied in the fatality column of this pandemic.

Each one of those lives lost to this pandemic represent a spark of the Divine in the cosmos that has been extinguished on this earthly plane. We can never forget that. We can never allow the ongoing nature of this pandemic and the increasing number of fatalities it leaves behind in its wake to numb us to the realization that more important than numbers, more important than measuring the trend and determining if it is rising or falling is each and every life behind that number. More important than tracking the numbers of fatalities is remembering each and every family impacted by every count in that number. Families mourning their loved ones lost to this pandemic. More important than judging someone because they go out in public with a mask on or they go out in public without a mask on is the effects any increase in that number has on individuals, families, and communities.

Repetitive exposure to the rote reporting of the increasing number counting the casualties of the same disaster only contributes to the numbness numbers have on the individual mind. Regardless of if the number is 1 or 1,101,101 — our souls should feel in the heart the loss of that spark reflecting the imago dei in the cosmos.

Paraphrasing the song written by James Quinn, SJ, let us pray for all those lost across the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic: