EDITORIAL: Let’s not become numb to the human toll of COVID

“Statistics are human beings with tears dried off.”
That was an observation made last month in The Washington Post by psychologist Paul Slovic. He was talking about how numb we have become to the COVID-19 death toll, which has kept relentlessly climbing through January. As of Tuesday, more than 421,000 Americans had died as a result of COVID-19, with more than 1,000 Americans dying per day after becoming infected with the deadly pathogen.
Perhaps inevitably, many Americans have become numb to the coronavirus and the number of lives that have been lost because of it. The pandemic has unfolded over 10 months, so the loss of life has happened in slow-motion. If more than 1,000 Americans died every day as a result of terrorist attacks, in plane crashes or on the battlefield, it would grab us by the scruff of our neck and force us to reckon with it.
Unless we have had a family member or close friend who has become severely ill or died as a result of COVID-19, it’s easy to view the pandemic as an abstraction, something that happens to other, less fortunate souls. Even worse, some have shrugged it off, believing they’ll bounce back if they catch it, like when they have a cold, or that those who have died were either elderly or their health was already precarious because of pre-existing conditions.
A quick look at the Twitter account Faces of COVID will disabuse anyone of the notion that it’s just the aged and fragile that the virus kills. There are teachers and firefighters represented who were in the prime of life. Sure, there are some grandmas and grandpas, too, but have they become expendable? Are their lives less important than our “right” to walk around without a mask or chow down in a packed restaurant? God forbid we ever become so callous.
Last weekend, the Observer-Reporter looked at one life in Washington that was lost due to COVID-19. Joseph Nicolella, who died at age 91 last August, was the beloved patriarch of his family. He appreciated simple pleasures like sitting on his front porch, puffing on a cigar and waving at passersby. He enjoyed Washington High School football games, and had been a WPIAL football official. He visited the Alpine Club every day before it closed because of the pandemic.
Nicolella had an eventful working life, building homes in Washington County, working on the construction of Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh and was a superintendent on construction and renovation projects at the Pentagon. Nicolella would travel to Washington, D.C., every week and return home on weekends for almost 10 years.
The end came quickly after Nicolella was diagnosed with COVID-19. Restrictions meant he was unable to have the large funeral he might have otherwise had.
According to his daughter-in-law, Missy Nicolella, his death “was a nightmare.”
Without question, Joseph Nicolella was more than a statistic. And the same goes for all the other people who have died because of COVID-19.