The New York Times Dedicated An Entire Cover Page To Mark Near 1,00,000 Covid-19 Deaths

On May 24, 2020, The New York Times (NYT) in its Sunday front page, published a list of 1,000 names, who died due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the US soil, with a grim headline of, “U.S. DEATHS NEAR 100,000, AN INCALCULABLE LOSS.” Further, the newspaper in its sub-heading said that, “They were not simply names on a list. They were us.” 

Also, the NYT in its short introduction on the front page said that “the 1,000 people here reflect just 1% of the toll. None were mere numbers.” which was completely covered in just text. It dedicated 3 pages to the victims of the pandemic.

As of May 24, 2020, at 1: 22 PM IST from the Johns Hopkins University‘s database, the death toll in the US had already reached 97,087, infecting 1,622,670.

Picture: Front Page Of The NYT

An Incalculable Loss

• Angeline Michalopulos, 92, “was never afraid to sing or dance.”
• Lila Fenwick, 87, was “the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Law.”
• Romi Cohn, 91, “saved 56 Jewish families from the Gestapo.“
• April Dunn, 33, was an “advocate for disability rights.”
• Patricia H. Thatcher, 79, “sang in her church choir for 42 years.”
• Fred Gray, 75, “liked his bacon and hash browns crispy.”
• Harley E. Acker, 79, “discovered his true calling when he started driving a school bus.”
• Frank Gabrin, 60, was an “emergency room doctor who died in his husband’s arms.”
• Skylar Herbert, 5, was “Michigan’s youngest victim of the coronavirus pandemic.”
• Philip Kahn, 100, “World War II veteran whose twin died in the Spanish Flu epidemic a century ago.”
• William D. Greeke, 55, who “thought it was important to know a person’s life story.”

In highlighting the grim US death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic, it signalled a powerful message to the general public across the world and to the White House, where President Trump desperately wants to open the world’s powerful capitalist country.

President Trump’s Tweet To Reopen The US Economy

Project By

This project publication was headed by Simone Landon and her associates in the NYT. The information of the deceased had been taken from nearly 1, 00,000 obituaries around the US, with a simple list of names and personal details.

Reactions To The NYT’s Front Page

• From Former US Vice President, Joe Biden

• From Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, USA  Adam Schiff

Interestingly, one of the Twitter users from India, referring to the NYT Sunday front-page, commented: “Meanwhile can Indian media finally look at the humans beyond ‘17 migrants killed’ etc. Human stories capture human imagination and propel us to feel and act much more than numbers – which we become numb to after a while.”