Dan Rather: "How can people not see the truth when it is everywhere?" [View all]

[babylonsister]

Dan Rather
https://www.facebook.com/theDanRather

The numbers are just breathtaking, in the saddest incarnation of the word. They literally leave me coming up short of air, pulse quickened, mind foggy, as I contemplate, or try to, the sheer level of death and loss and families and communities torn apart from the deadly virus.

Graphs show spikes, but spikes are tallied in lives wiped off our fragile Earth, lives often vibrant and full just weeks earlier. At first no one saw the tsunami coming. And when warning sirens rang, from China, and Europe, and even from within our country, they went largely unheeded. A force of unrelenting death dismissed as a hoax or discounted as a flu.

Why has this death cult persisted? It is the question of our time, echoing a moment in our history that summons general disbelief. How can people not see the truth when it is everywhere? We try for benchmarkers to measure the present carnage, so many 9/11's or even the death toll of Vietnam. But this seems to have less impact than hurricanes and other "acts of God" which kill far, far fewer but seem to garner much more fear and elicit much more empathy.

As an old TV newsman, I can't help but wonder whether a big part of the problem is that this is not a visual form of mass death. The images of terrorism, or war, or the aftermath of ferocious winds, or a plane tumbling out of the sky are the kinds of stories that win photojournalists awards. How do you take yet another picture of a patient on ventilators? There are always people on ventilators. There are always people in hospitals dying. Not on this scale, of course, not by a long shot. But human beings have a hard time comprehending scale. Our emotions are more resonant with the personal, the small tragedy.

I find the emerging number of nurses' heartbreaking testimonials particularly affecting. I am moved by the pictures of smiling family members who had no idea when the photo was taken that they would soon die in pain and alone. I yearn for every one of my fellow citizens to engage. I understand the fear of a crumbling economy. I understand the frustration of schools closed and life and families disrupted. I desperately wish this wasn't real.

But, but, but... it is all too real. My line of work has brought me face to face with death in many forms. It is a finality that defines the ultimate bookend of our lives. And it is here, everywhere. I pray that people wake up. Every small act can literally save a life. Vaccines are coming. Science will ride to our rescue. But in the interim it is our common humanity and empathy that will save the most lives. We need to do a better job of describing the horror. We need to all pull together to make sure the reality of our present doesn't become a final destiny that draws far more into its deadly undertow.

Courage and Peace to all of you.