The new coronavirus claimed Cleon Boyd. Then, six days later, he took his same double brother, Leon. When they died, the disease spread to their families, infecting 11 of their immediate parents.
The boyd family’s heartbreaking joy spread to the cities where they lived and worked, radically converting attitudes towards coronavirus and spreading the adoption of social estating and face masks.
From rural Vermont, where Boyd twins are guilty of two of the three COVID-19 deaths in their county in the Bronx, where another 4,000 people have succumbed to the virus, the trauma resulting from some 200,000 deaths in the United States has changed the outlook. and habit of family, friends, neighbors and colleagues.
While the country is about to take another dark step in the long and fatal march of the virus, in sight, political battles over how to curb its spread have stolen much of the country’s attention, making it harder to realize how much the effect of each and every death can be.
Two hundred thousand dead is like wasting the entire population of Salt Lake City or Montgomery, Alabama, devastation. It is also the number of COVID-19 deaths that President Donald Trump said at a press conference on March 29 would mean that “we have all done a task together. “
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Six months later, however, Americans are moving away from the news of the pandemic. Google’s virus searches have fallen by nearly 90% since March. Americans tell pollsters that they have little hope that the danger will soon disappear.
Despite the serious effects of the pandemic on jobs and persistent discussions about mask mandates and the government’s role in the crisis, the country’s extremely high workload, more than 6. 5 million so far, and the number of deaths have led to increasing acceptance. preventive measures scientists recommend: washing your hands, social estrangement, dressing up in masks.
“When you know who’s dead, it can look like a non-public attack, either on your network or you know it intimately,” said Rebecca Robbins, a fitness habit researcher at Brigham.
But the proximity of a COVID-19 tragedy does not ensure that others take more precautions. In overcrowded and low-income neighborhoods, the death of the family circle does not make social estification imaginable and does not eliminate the desire to paint long hours up close. And to others, his political vision leads them to believe that the virus is not serious and that precautions are a partisan tactic.
About 1 in 50 Americans have already tested positive, and probably many more have had the virus yet. In late August, 59% of Americans said they knew who had tested positive for coronavirus, according to an Ipsos survey. 23% reported knowing a user who died from the virus.
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In the case of the Boyds, a double dose of tragedy temporarily spread to southern Vermont. The family, first without masks, had been skeptical. “When he first came out, we laughed, ” said Leon’s widow, Pam. “Like, ‘Oh, yes, that’s fine, that’s just another political thing. ‘”
Meghan Carrier, Cléon’s daughter, said she “didn’t think it was wrong, but before my dad was in the hospital, I didn’t see what might happen. “She was the eleventh user of her family circle to contract COVID-19 this spring, after Leon’s wife, the twins’ brother and sister, Carrier’s siblings, and their spouses.
Some members of the family circle believe they hit the virus near Mount Snow Ski Resort, where three of them worked; others believe the virus hit them in the circle of the family’s sugar hut, where they gather to make maple syrup and sing country melodies.
Once Carrier’s father put a fan on him, no one in the family circle spoke to him and was hospitalized for 10 days before he died. His brother, who was cared for in another hospital, spent six days there before he died, neither of them knew that his double illness was 64 years old.
When Cleon died, there may only be a public funeral, so friends and neighbors organized a Palm Sunday parade, a dark and joyful procession, while cars, trucks, chimneys and police units, tractors and Cleon’s own hairdresser passed through the historic city center of Wilmington. .
They did it a week later, on Easter Sunday, a lot of people, this time with Leon’s lawnmower – he worked for the road branch – at the parade.
The death of the twins “opened everyone’s eyes,” Carrier said, “people take the virus seriously. “
Suddenly, the mask gave the impression everywhere. In the cities of Wilmington and Dover, Vermont, some men ordered the mask to be used in public places, which Dover police chief Randy Johnson said would not have happened without the twins’ death.
“It’s heartbreaking for the community,” said Johnson, who believes a government order is unnecessary because many other people would have done the right thing without a law forcing them. “Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that other people use their death incorrectly, just to publicize their political point. “
Not everyone took death seriously. At Walgreen’s the other day, Pam Boyd shuddered when three other people clashed with her in a narrow alley.
“Can you take a step back?” she asked. ” He intends to measure six feet high. “
“Oh, for the cakes, ” murmured one who had almost brushed Boyd.
“I am my husband for this COVID, ” said Boyd.
The woman laughed, said Boyd. La woman’s partner intervened: “I’m sorry. Let’s get out of the store. “
But the woman kept laughing when she left. Boyd called out to her, “I hope your circle of relatives doesn’t have to go through this. “
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Before he got sick, Michael Droege thought that the coronavirus was not dangerous.
“I think it was all just a glorified flu, ” said Droege. “I think the Democrats were disproportionate. It’s an election year and it’s the other person’s fault. “
Before his wife, Ricky, got the virus, Droege laughed at the few people wearing masks at the steel foil factory where he worked near Kansas City, Missouri.
A guy who covered his face constantly disinfected his workspace and worried about infecting his octogenarian mother.
“I used to make him have a hard time, ” said Droege. “I approached the fence and said, ‘Am I going to give you something?'”
Then, on June 15, Droege learned that a colleague had tested positive; Droege, who has a long history of emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, put on a mask, but it was too late: he tested positive on June 19 and was hospitalized for three days. Then.
The following week, Ricky also became ill: his pulse flashed in the 1980s, he ended up in the hospital. The paramedics took his stretcher to his room so the two could see someone else. Droege can slightly see his wife’s face under oxygen. mask, only his green eyes — and “were full of fear. “
“I greeted him and said, “I love you, and I told him to stay fighting, ” he recalls. “And she said, ‘I love you too. ‘”
Droege, 70, enjoyed Ricky so much that he married her twice. They separated in 1984 after 14 years, but Droege told her adult daughters that the worst mistake she made was divorcing her mother.
At his granddaughter’s wedding in Florida in 2018, Ricky slipped, fell and broke his skull. Droege took her to the hospital and took care of her. They discovered love and remarried in July.
“We were going to stay in combination for the rest of our lives,” said Droege, who now lives in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.
Ricky, 75, died on July 17. Droege, who is guilty, believes he passed the virus on to his wife. “I didn’t take it seriously,” she says crying. “I think the only explanation for why she died for me. . . “
I wish he’d put on a mask sooner. He would have liked not to make fun of his colleague.
“I shouldn’t have done that to him, ” he said. ” Not knowing how bad it was, that’s why everyone in the store had a hard time. “
He doesn’t blame Trump, but Droege says the viral challenge in America lies in people’s reluctance to care for others.
“Everyone should point the finger at the president,” Droege said, but “he can’t do anything for a non-public duty. America has a non-public duty to do so. “
Outside the hospital for several weeks, you still want an oxygen supplement. Without a source of income even with Social Security, you’ll have to repaint on September 30. He’ll wear a mask.
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Shaquana Miller Garrett’s family circle took the pandemic seriously from the start. Shaquana, basically because she had type 1 diabetes and needed weekly dialysis.
Her paintings put her on the front line, literally. A cash register at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Shaquana searched everyone else who arrived at the front door.
“I warned Shaquana,” said his father, Curtis Miller Sr. , who with his wife, Faye, is a co-pastor in the church of the circle of relatives, New Life Ministries. “I told him that if you caught him, you can just take him home to your family circle. She knew it. The backhand is 20/20. I’ve insisted it stop. “
Shaquana’s husband, Gregory Garrett, said he had not gained the most productive protection. “They were giving doctors and nurses the right masks,” he said. “But my wife only had the thin blue mask. How is that possible? The user other people see when they arrive at the hospital is my wife.
They met in high school and then reconnected via Facebook several years after graduation. They worked hard – Gregory had two jobs, in a UPS warehouse and on the team grounds of a local golf course – they had two daughters (Kendall, 5, and Kennedee, 3), and formed their circle of relatives around the church, where he ran Shaquana. The Department of Youth.
One Day in June, Shaquana told her circle of relatives that the hospital had screened workers for coronavirus, and hers tested positive. His condition temporarily deteriorated and he eventually returned to where he worked, this time as a patient.
One day, when Faye Miller did not hear about her daughter – they called them “five, six, seven times a day” – she insisted that her husband take her to Holy Cross.
But “they wouldn’t let us in, ” said Shaquana’s father. “Her mom protested so much, begged and cried, and yet they put Shaquana on the phone. I said, ‘Shaquana, you have to fight. ‘ She said, ‘All right, Dad. ‘”
The next night, his parents won a call at 3 a. m. They ran in and saw Shaquana’s code from a distance several times. Doctors and nurses “had a pulse, then lost it, then had a pulse and then lost it again,” Faye Miller said. But we can communicate with her, and I think she can just listen to us. We told him we enjoyed it. “
Shaquana died on July 2. She’s 35.
“I didn’t know how quickly I could get someone out of your life,” Gregory said. “Seven days, and she’s gone. “
He and his daughters tested positive while Shaquana was sick. The cases were mild (fever and diarrhoea in girls, almost no symptoms for Gregory), but they were quarantined when Shaquana died.
He still dressed the women in his best church attire and led them to attend his mother’s funeral, however, they could not enter by worrying about infecting others, so they watched the outdoor service of construction on a cell phone.
In the cemetery, “they let us park the car right in front of the funeral, so we could see everything,” Gregory said. “Then they gave them all out of the way so we could get out of the car and put flowers in the coffin.
After his daughter’s death, Curtis Miller inserted messages about the precautions against the virus into his Sunday sermons, first on Facebook and then, in August, when he reopened the shrine, in person, two metres between the masked worshippers.
Gregory has a mask executor, talking when others undress. “If you respect me, ” he said, “don’t surround me without a mask. “
It is Faye Miller’s duty to take Shaquana’s daughters to the park, and they wear masks religiously.
“They ask their mother all the time, ” he said. Once we were walking to the door, and there was a little moonlight in the sky, and I said, ‘Your mom up there is smiling at us. ‘”
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When other people who die for COVID-related reasons are well known in their community, the effect can be huge, but not uniform.
This can lead to scenes like this: at dawn, the day after The Death of Bernie Juskewicz of COVID-19, Vermont Republican Gov. Phil Scott stood in front of the state capital to rock the flag to separate staff from his former state legislator Juskewicz, probably the highest prominent Vermonter to lose his life to the virus.
His death “has had a profound effect on other people who take things very seriously,” said Frank Cioffi, president of Greater Burlington Industrial Corp.
The former electorate unearthed his old Juskewicz T-shirts and re-assembled his crusade symptoms – “Bernie J,” to distinguish him from the iconic Vermont senator – in his backyards.
Bernie J, a University of Vermont sporting event player dressed in green and gold Catamount, was among more than 3,000 enthusiasts who crowded at the Patrick Gymnasium on March 10 to see the house basketball team beat Baltimore County at the University of Maryland to advance to the convention final. as the No. 1 seed It was the last game before COVID-19 finished the season.
At the time, Vermont had only one suspected case of coronavirus. A few days later, Juskewicz developed what he and his doctor believe to be a sinus infection.
But the infection hasn’t gone away. On March 18, Juskewicz, who was walking 8 kilometres a day, passed out at home and paramedics discouraged him from going to the hospital due to the risk of developing COVID-19, according to his daughter, Mary Kathryn.
Juskewicz’s fatigue is extreme. You have lost your appetite. When he fainted again, his daughter convinced him to go to the hospital.
Over the next two weeks, after her wife also contracted the virus and she and Mary Kathryn quarantined, Bernie J developed a fungus in her lungs and her organs have deteriorated. Word spread that there wasn’t much time left.
Juskewicz’s wife and daughter, over 40, rushed to the hospital and took them to the ICU for one last visit.
“My mother, my brother Mark, the priest, me, a nurse, my brother from Montana and his wife were on the phone,” Mary Kathryn said. “And we just spoke to my father until he died.
Some of Juskewicz’s colleagues, such as the governor, used his death as a symbol, a way to inspire others to pay attention to the pandemic. But her daughter, dean of Vermont Technical College, said she “wouldn’t tell her anything about my father; I wouldn’t tell a student, you know, because they think they’re immune. “
He will wait to express his pain after the pandemic has subsided, with the kind of shipment his father would have wanted: a big party, with Polish music and Kris Kristofferson.
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Hundreds of miles away, when the pillar of a network died, the governor did not perform any ceremonies.
He asked no one. Where Pamela Sue Rush lived and died in Rural Lowndes County, Alabama, a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line.
Many of them, like Rush, live “in small cell homes,” so how can they isolate themselves?She asked Catherine Coleman Flowers, a remote cousin who grew up in Lowndes County and an environmental activist.
It Flowers, who suggested Rush tell his story to Congress in 2018, when he was first hit on a plane to look senators and representatives in the eye and say, “I’m poor. “
After that, Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. , and actress Jane Fonda visited Rush’s house, where walls were covered and uncooked sewage flowed into the backyard because it had no septic system.
Despite his time in the spotlight, Rush, who dropped out of high school and then developed upper blood pressure and diabetes, remained in a position where the coronavirus hit hard.
Flowers said that the other people she knew in Lowndes County who had stuck to COVID-19 had not organized parties or acted recklessly. “These are underpaid and essential employees in factories,” he says. you can’t lose a pay check. “
After some of Rush’s relatives became ill, she did her best to stay away from others, but the virus spread to her family. For Rush, he started with headaches, fever and breathing difficulties. They took her to one hospital and then another. He died on July 3. He’s 50 years old.
His circle of relatives will get a new trailer from an anonymous donor, Flowers said. Relatives take care of Rush’s children, Jeremiah, 18, who needs to be a truck driver, and Bianca, 12, a woman studying with lung problems.
“Pamela died of an economy that didn’t give her equivalent access,” Flowers said. “At every stage. There’s a hatch. And the last COVID.
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After Elizabeth Escolastico’s death from COVID-19 at the same Bronx hospital, she held a memorial at Zoom, comforted through a death doula, consultant until the end of life.
This is what she can get as close as possible to a real farewell.
“Sometimes my center is so broken,” said Escolastico, a 38-year-old social worker. “Sometimes I find it hard to breathe. “
Until this spring, he shared an apartment in the South Bronx near Yankee Stadium with his mother, Maria Altagracia Mejía, 65, and his father, Cecilio Escolastico, a 72-year-old retired maintenance worker.
“Inseparable,” they called them Scholastic. Born in the Dominican Republic, where they met, she had moved to Manhattan in the 1970s.
First they gave their daughter in poor health. It was at the beginning of the pandemic and a telehealth doctor ignored his considerations about the virus. “He said, ‘Oh, don’t pay attention to the news, they overreact to things,'” he said.
A few days later, or her parents woke up sick, Escolarístico does not know if Maria the virus in a dialysis center, or if Cecilio had hit her friends she had hosted, or if she transmitted the virus to them, an option that lurks. Your.
But over time her mom told Escolastico to call her an ambulance, “I knew she was leaving me,” she said. Maria passed away the following afternoon.
Cecilio, who suffered from chronic asthma, died nine days later. At the time, the New York funeral homes were so overwhelmed that Cecilio’s body was sent to Rhode Island for cremation.
The worst year of Escolastico’s life, relentless: two weeks after his father’s death, one of his aunts succumbed to COVID-19, another aunt, suffering from mild dementia, deteriorated severely and had to be moved from her Manhattan apartment to a retirement home in New Jersey.
“I feel like a total generation of my family circle has been eliminated,” Escolastico said.
Scholastic has evangelical on the prevention of viruses. She cleans more, washes her hands more. Her sister, she said, wisked a bottle of Lysol like a water gun: “He’ll spray you until you suffocate. “
Scholastic warns his parents’ friends not to faint. Residents of their community took the virus more seriously in the spring, when COVID-19 swept through the Bronx, but in recent years it has noticed fewer masks.
“They’re back on the street, partying and on the street,” he said. “I think it’s crazy. “
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Gowen reported from Kansas City, Missouri; Rozsa reported from Miami; and Sacchetti reported from Alabama. Susan H. Greenberg in Middlebury, Vt. ; Ben Guarino in New York; and Emily Guskin and Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
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