The COVID Memorial project in Washington, D.C. in 2020. Photo by Ted Eytan via the Library of Congress (CC BY-SA)
Five years ago this month, the pandemic began and it’s hard to calculate the scale of loss. Almost 7 million people died worldwide, more than 1 million in the US alone. Multiply that by the number of people who knew and loved them and it’s an astounding measure of grief. And then beyond that, are all the other intangible losses—work lives changed, offices shuttered, school years missed, relationships broken. World-renowned grief expert David Kessler argues that Americans are dealing with a lot of unacknowledged post-pandemic grief.