New York Times’ Front Page Shows Grim Reality Of Covid Deaths In The US

• New York Times published a front page graphic representing lives lost in the country’s battle against the coronavirus pandemic.
• According to recent reports, the virus has claimed more than 500,000 lives in the United States.
• This means “more Americans have died from Covid-19 than did on the battlefields of World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined,” the Times said.

A quick glance on the front page of last Sunday’s New York Times and the eye is instantly drawn to the center portion which features a grim representation of the Covid-19 deaths in the United States for less than 12 months.

It’s a sad reality but as of February 21, the coronavirus pandemic has claimed almost 500,000 lives – each represented by a dot in the graphic – in the country.

Times graphic editors Lazaro Gamio and Lauren Leatherby “plotted out the points so they stretched chronologically down a long scroll, from the first reported U.S. death nearly a year ago to the current toll of often thousands of casualties per day,” the newspaper reported.

Together with print graphics coordinator Bill Marsh, they successfully executed the idea on print.

Gamio said about it:

“I think part of this technique, which is good, is that it overwhelms you — because it should.”

Leatherby hopes it would remind people that the virus is real and it’s still out there.

“There is just a certain numbness, I think, that is normal human nature when this has been going on for so long, but we’ve tried to just keep reminding people of what’s still going on. And I think something striking about this particular piece that we were trying to drive home is just the sheer speed at which it was all happening,” she pointed out.

By February 22, Monday, the US has officially surpassed 500,000 deaths which means “more Americans have died from Covid-19 than did on the battlefields of World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined,” wrote Times.

Columbia University environmental health sciences professor Jeffrey Shaman said:

“The magnitude of it is just horrifying. It’s been a failure.”

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