Grim reports are the norm these days, but this one will be visible to those not just working inside hospitals. New York City councilman Mark D. Levine, also the chairman of the city council’s health committee sent a very distressing message today in a 13-part tweet. “NYC’s healthcare system is being pushed to the limit. And sadly, now so is the city’s system for managing our dead.”
Levine continued in his detailed account of the toll the pandemic is taking: “Soon we’ll start ‘temporary internment.’ This likely will be done by using a NYC park for burials (yes you read that right). Trenches will be dug for 10 caskets in a line.”
The tweet continues saying, “it will be done in a dignified, orderly – and temporary—manner. But it will be tough for NYers to take.” This is the result of “100s now working 24/7 at NYC’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner to manage a mass death event.”
Nothing matters more in this crisis than saving the living. But we need to face the gruesome reality that we need more resources to manage our dead as well.
Levine writes that the goal is “to avoid scenes like those in Italy, where the military was forced to collect bodies from churches and even off the streets” and we need to “ask not just for doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists. We also need mortuary affairs staff.”
Levine’s concluding tweet said: “To recap: Nothing matters more in this crisis than saving the living. But we need to face the gruesome reality that we need more resources to manage our dead as well. Or the pain of this crisis will be compounded almost beyond comprehension.”
And that of course if such burials are required they will be done in a dignified, orderly, professional manner. Let’s all keep working hard to slow this virus so that such steps are not in fact needed. 2/2
— Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) April 6, 2020
Shortly after the string of tweets, Levine offered some clarification to the park burial comments, saying that tweet received a lot of attention, “So I want to clarify: this is a contingency NYC is preparing for BUT if the death rate drops enough it will not be necessary.”
