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It’s hard to escape the numbers.
美国有超过550万人的测试呈阳性COVID-19。
More than 170,000 of them have died.
The numbers are so mind-numbing that it may be hard to think of the people behind them.
But the losses are real and the ripple effect extends beyond immediate families to whole communities.
And the effects aren’t confined to the families of people who die. The families of people who become seriously ill and survive are also affected.
一个新reportsuggests the pandemic could leave hundreds of thousands grieving. In many cases, that grief may be exacerbated by the isolation and separation from loved ones.
“These are the secondary victims,” saidHolly Prigerson, PhD, a bereavement researcher, co-director of the Center for Research on End-of-Life Care at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and one of the report’s authors.
She says there are fears those secondary victims could be headed for intense and enduring psychological distress.
她告诉Healthline：“如果尚未发生，就会发生真正的心理健康危机，并且不可能在一夜之间离开。”雷竞技app官网
We set out to talk to families about how they’re handling grief and how their loss may be changing their lives.
“It kills me because my dad was one of the healthiest people I knew,” said Kevin Vallejo. “At 57, he was still skiing.”
Vallejo, a 23-year-old medical student from Miami, Florida, has been dealt a double blow. He lost both his father and grandfather to COVID-19 in just over a month.
Both men were doctors. His grandfather, Jorge, was 89 and a retired OB-GYN. His father, Carlos Vallejo, was an internist.
Both were his role models.
“My dad played basketball and racquetball with me. He’d work out. He was a very healthy guy. That’s why it’s just shocking that this destroyed him,” Vallejo told Healthline.
Kevin Vallejo says when the pandemic began, his father was conducting telemedicine appointments, but he still wanted to see his long-time patients at nursing homes.
“He was seeing them in full PPE (personal protective equipment), but he still somehow caught the virus,” Vallejo said.
The hardest part, Vallejo says, is that the family couldn’t be with his father for his final days. He passed away on August 1.
“那是困扰我的一件事。如果我本可以和他一起去房间里，我父亲可能还活着。”瓦列霍说。
“For my family, it’s a roller coaster of emotions. One second we’re just trying to get by, the next somebody’s crying in the house. And we beat ourselves up over what we might have been able to do,” he added.
That last part is particularly frustrating, Vallejo says, because he comes from a medical family with more than 20 doctors.
His mother is a practicing psychiatrist, but for now they insist she stay safe.
“I won’t let her go to a nursing home anymore. For now, she can just do telecare,” Vallejo said. “We can’t take any more loss in our family.”
The families of healthcare workers are being hit hard by the pandemic.
Kaiser Health News和Guardian美国编辑了数据库called “Lost on the frontline.” It contains the names of more than 900 healthcare workers who likely died from COVID-19.
卡桑德拉·格兰特·迪亚兹（Cassondra Grant Diaz）就是其中之一。
The 31-year-old was a bookkeeper at a nursing home in Hartford, Connecticut.
Her husband, Sean, says they believe she contracted the virus at work, even though she was always careful.
“She always wore the mask. She always had on gloves. She always had another set of clothes,” he told Healthline.
“When she got home, she would change her shirt in the car, leave her jacket in the car or bring it up and spray it in the hallway. When she got in the house she would put her clothes in a special little basket, then seal them in a bag and head straight to the shower,” he explained.
But in late April, Diaz decided her job was too dangerous.
她的丈夫说：“她之所以停止工作，是因为她害怕生病。”“他们开始让更多的人降低covid阳性。但这已经太晚了。”
Diaz first developed some flu-like symptoms. A week later, on April 29, she complained of pain in her leg.
An ambulance took her to the hospital. She died that same day.
“I don’t even know how to explain how I feel,” her husband said. “This was my soulmate, the love of my life and she died nine days after our anniversary. I can’t sleep. I grieve and I cry every day.”
He says he has found some comfort in a support group for people who have also lost their spouses. But only a little.
“I’ve never felt a pain like this before. I’m dealing with survivor guilt and I don’t wish this on anyone,” he said.
At 21, Jasmine Obra says she feels conflicted.
The Anaheim, California, nursing student is happy to have survived COVID-19. But she’s devastated that she lost her brother, Joshua, to the virus.
“It’s so hard. It’s hard to think that I got sick and I survived it. But my brother, basically my twin, my best friend didn’t. I never thought we’d be separated,” Obra told Healthline.
Joshua, 29, was a registered nurse at a nursing facility that cares for older adults with dementia.
Obra为说她是她哥哥的学徒,不按章工作g alongside him to fulfill her clinical practice requirement for nursing school.
对她来说，这是理想的。兄弟姐妹生活在一起，她与哥哥一起工作。该设施有安全协议。
“我们的设施一直在锁定。我们检查了温度，氧饱和度，并寻找COVID的体征和症状。我们戴着口罩。当时，我们认为没有问题。”她解释说。
Then, one day in June, Joshua came down with COVID-19 symptoms. They both got tested. They were both positive.
On June 19, Joshua was in the hospital. Four days later, he was on a ventilator.
“我在家里孤立。我记得祈祷和哭泣。我一直想知道我是否会在他旁边的呼吸机上结束。我的父母非常害怕他们会失去两个孩子，”奥布拉说。
约书亚于7月6日去世。
“我从没想过我会经历这样的事情。我们的生活几乎是完美的。现在我的生活颠倒了，”奥布拉说。“失去这样的人在精神和身体上给你带来了如此黑暗的伤害。”
Obra says she’d like to go back to work in healthcare when it’s safe. But for now, she is trying to comfort her parents and she’s finding some solace in urging people to be careful.
“It’s not a joke, which is why I take every opportunity to speak out about it. I hope I can help prevent other people from having this happen to them,” she said.
Kristin Urquiza lost her father, Mark, to COVID-19 on June 30.
She says her dad was relatively healthy but came down with symptoms in mid-June and was hospitalized.
在interviewwith Healthline, she said the hardest part was that her father died alone in an ICU with a nurse holding his hand.
“It’s agonizing. You know when my dad went into the ICU he was planning to come out. I also know that he was terrified,” she said. “Just thinking about my dad those last few days, hearing strange noises in the ICU, the voices of strangers, not being able to hear the voices of the people who were wanting him to live, that just breaks my heart.”
Urquiza blames her father’s illness on failed policies. She says he listened to the Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and President Donald Trump who said it was safe for the state to reopen and for people to go out.
Now, Urquiza is turning to activism to help her heal.
她上周是民主党全国代表大会上的黄金时段演讲者，并成立了一个名为Covid倡导变革的倡导组织。
“Being able to connect with others who feel like me… has helped me feel less alone,” she says.