3.9 million years

Illustrations and graphics by Christina Animashaun. Article by  Terry Nguyen and Brian Resnick. Vox – March 17, 2021.

The pandemic took lives far too soon. How much human potential has been lost?

This year, Catalina Castillo is unsure whether her family of five will congregate for a holiday photo shoot. It’s a simple concern, but a traumatic one. Historically, it’s been her mother, Carola Montero, who urges Catalina and her three siblings to pose for a portrait — for memory’s sake. But this past December, Carola died of complications of Covid-19. “She was the reason we did a Christmas photo or any family photo,” Catalina said. Now someone else will have to make sure this ritual goes unforgotten.

For so many people like Catalina, who have lost loved ones during the pandemic, they look out on their futures and see these missing spaces. They think about the things their loved ones would have done. They think about the loving actions that are so small but that in sum are what fill family life with such richness.

More than 530,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the United States, but that figure hardly begins to explain the magnitude of the loss. […]

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