How Could the Strongest Country in the World Fall So Far?

“…and, in the United States of America”

How many times in recent days and weeks have you heard someone end a statement about the coronavirus, and the government’s futility, with those words? As in, how could the strongest country in the world fall so far.

These photos are searing. The grief and sorrow is so raw and so deep that the hospital workers in the first photo can’t even look at the camera. I am filled with the horror and outrage that they are either unable to, or can’t afford to muster–because of the shock; because they need to keep it together; because any one of them might be next.

I am also moved by Steffi’s personal Instagram caption below, surely written on the fly, especially the second sentence that cascades into the next thing, and the next.

My heart goes out to all the hospital and healthcare workers, and everyone else in harm’s way right now, including every photographer covering the virus.

-Michael Shaw⠀
⠀
Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

Caption: Coronavirus is also about death. Definitely not the normal when the assignment is to cover medical workers holding photos of their colleagues who died from the coronavirus protesting over not having the proper medical equipment and then go to two different hospitals to watch them take out the dead they can’t even fit in their regular morgue and so have been hiring extra refrigerator trucks #stayhome #stayhomestaysafe ⠀
I only go out to work otherwise I don’t leave the house.”

View in Instagram