Among the most horrific images to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic has been that of the diseased left lung (see graphic) of a 20-something young woman whose lungs were destroyed by the virus. She had received a double lung transplant at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. This marked the first known lung transplant in the United States for Covid-19.
The 10-hour surgery was more difficult and took several hours longer than most lung transplants because inflammation from the disease had left the woman’s lungs “completely plastered to tissue around them, the heart, the chest wall and diaphragm,” said Dr. Ankit Bharat, the chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the lung transplant program at Northwestern Medicine,
He said the patient, who had no serious underlying medical conditions, was recovering well: However, one of the damaged lungs removed had the appearance of a glob of rotten hamburger and showed clearly that those who dismiss Covid as "not that severe" are detached from reality. It is severe and is even now filling up hospital ICUs in at least a dozen states. But that is why we need more images of its horrors. To get into people's craniums that this is nothing to play around with or take lightly.
If a twenty something woman with no underlying conditions could end up with lungs like the one shown, then so could Bill Maher, Holman Jenkins Jr., Kayleigh McEnany, Ron Desantis or the clowns (from the Hoover Inst.) who wrote an op-ed in yesterday's WSJ (p. A17) proclaiming "the data is in" and we need to open everything up already. This, despite a same day WSJ story ('New Cases Grow In Over A Dozen States', p. A6) noting:
"New coronavirus cases have accelerated in more than a dozen states as summer weather and reopenings have prompted throngs of people to gather across the country."
And let's note many of those gathering refuse to take even minimal precautions, including mask wearing, social distancing. It's as if they believe just because a yahoo governor says 'Let's open!" a state can do so and all will be well.
Why lurid Covid disease images, aren't news reports enough? No, not when so many proclaim they are fake news or the medical personnel are just play acting. Of course, it is also possible that assorted mental invalids will also insist the image shown above is "faked" or photo-shopped, but hey, there's a limit of lower IQ for convincing - so we must halt at the idiot level.
Meanwhile, many of us have assembled a representative, visual archive of the staggering human toll of the crisis from which we all to hope to emerge. These images are as necessary as those of the Holocaust many of us have also archived, to ensure at some future date no cynical political monster or his zombies attempts to deny the respective reality - or minimize the pandemic. . Besides, for society to respond in ways commensurate with the importance of this pandemic, we have to see it. At least its effects on sundry organs if not the patients themselves. For us to be transformed by it, it has to penetrate our hearts as well as our minds.
As my Psychology post doc niece Shayl put it: Images force us to contend with the unspeakable. In this case the unspeakable nature of this virus. The images also help humanize clinical statistics, to make them comprehensible. They step unto the breach. Sarah Elizabeth Lewis author of 'Where Are The Photos Of People Dyng Of Covid'? has written that:
"Visualization is a powerful tool — it can help us more deeply understand the severity of the situation as we work to curb the virus. But the visuals we need most in this time are difficult to come by. What are we missing by not having images that represent the full impact of the coronavirus crisis? In the United States, the frequently recurring pictures in the media are of the president, the virus itself represented as a spiky ball, health care and front line workers deemed essential and visuals conveying economic disarray (empty businesses, winding unemployment lines)."
While there have been some professional images from inside medical zones, ICUs they remain rare. “Make note of what we can’t see,” CNN commentator Brian Stelter said in March, adding:
“That’s the suffering happening inside hospitals.”
He went on to discuss a video that was taken covertly in a hospital. What it means, he said, “is that we’re not seeing this crisis with our own eyes.”
Clearly, a backward state like Georgia isn't, having allowed opening of restaurants to full capacity yesterday. This despite being one of 23 states that saw a rise in Covid cases over the last week. (At least a dozen of them surging by more than 25 percent,) All of this translates to an ongoing plateau reflecting our "terrible leadership" in Rachel Maddow's words. This while other nations (Italy, Spain, Germany, UK) cycled through a clear rise, peak and decline. Meanwhile, in another backward state- Arizona - we learned total hospitalizations have doubled since April and the new daily cases reported has reached record levels.
The two bonehead Bozos - Trump and Pence - insist it's all a reflection of more testing, not grasping that the rate of disease infections exceeds the rate of testing. But then I never believed either of these clowns could do the math anyway. As Jeanne Marrazzo, Director of Infectious Diseases at Univ of Alabama noted: "It's a real increase in cases we're finding"
In the meantime, a new projection model out of the Univ. of Washington has more deaths in the next 127 days than in the previous 129. (As Maddow reported last night). This was in the wake of Pence claiming the Trump gov't response is "cause for celebration". Really, Pence? Hundreds and thousands of rotting lungs and 230,000 dead by October 1st is 'cause for celebration'? What are you smoking anyway? Especially when the clown spouted:
"Thanks to the leadership of President Trump we are winning the fight against the invisible enemy".
Well, if that's winning, I'd hate to see losing!
All of which shows me we need many more graphic images of the virus effects on fellow citizens to break through the reams of propaganda. This will not be easy. Medical privacy laws in the United States can present obstacles to this kind of viewing. Instead of images, we have had daily briefings of statistics presented in pie charts and bar graphs. During news conferences, officials such as Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany have illustrated how social distancing can flatten the curve through clear numerical analysis.
Statistics alone, however clear, are not historically how we have communicated calamity on this scale. There is an inverse relationship between high numbers and comprehension: It is much harder to picture tragedy of the kind we are now witnessing than it is to visualize one person in pain, or an image that connects with a familiar aspect of the human condition, what psychologists have termed the “identifiable victim effect.”
This is why, as Shayl put it: "We need a lot more personal pain narratives and the grisly images to go along with them. Americans can't allow themselves to be bamboozled by the ongoing foolishness that Trump and Pence have it all under control." Indeed, and by October - with two million more pairs of rotted, blown out Covid lungs - it may be too late. Above all, people need to recognize that a 2nd lockdown is still possible if hospitals - even in Texas- are overwhelmed by the infected.
See Also:
by Amanda Marcotte | June 17, 2020 - 7:58am | permalink
Donald Trump wants to pretend the coronavirus is in the rearview mirror, but reports over the weekend suggested that instead the U.S. is witnessing a resurgence of the virus after weeks of decline. Twenty-one states have seen an increase of new cases in recent days. Most of the spikes are in Republican-controlled states like Texas, Florida, Georgia and Arizona, where governors curried favor with Trump by lifting restrictions long before meeting even some of the criteria recommended by public health officials. On Sunday, the death toll from the virus, now at 118,000, surpassed the number of American lives lost in World War I.
In response to this surge, Americans living in our polarized political culture are pointing the finger at each other. Conservatives are opportunistically blaming the anti-racism protests spreading across both big urban areas and small towns. Liberals, on the other hand, are casting a gimlet eye on Americans who have crowded into outdoor spaces at bars and restaurants in states that have allowed those establishments to reopen.
by Thomas Neuburger | June 17, 2020 - 5:18am | permalink
