We Need to Talk About COVID

To The Best Of Our Knowledge

Wisconsin Public Radio

Prx, Philosophy, Knowledge, Wpr, Ttbook, Wisconsin, Society & Culture

4.7 • 844 Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2025

⏱️ 52 minutes

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Summary

It’s been five years since the start of the pandemic. Some 1.2 million Americans died of COVID. That’s a lot of grief. But our loss is much more than death. Many lost the friendship of the workplace. And for a subset of teenagers, there was the loss of two years of high school. And the list goes on. Many of us are still left unmoored. But maybe our collective grief can bring us together.

Original Air Date: March 08, 2025

Interviews In This Hour:
What happens when a nation doesn't grieve? — What the Civil War can teach us about American grief — How a funeral singer helps us to mourn

Guests:
David Kessler, Drew Gilpin Faust, Lauren DePino

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Five years ago this month, the first deaths from COVID were reported in the U.S., and life as we knew it changed.
0:08.1	In many ways, forever.
0:12.0	Almost 7 million people died worldwide, more than 1 million in the U.S.
0:17.5	Work, school, relationships were permanently altered, and the ramifications are all around us.
0:24.1	I'm Anne Strange Shamps, and here's my question. Can any of our national mood, maybe even our current
0:30.5	political climate, be traced back to that collective trauma? And if so, what do we do about it? Today, on to the best of our knowledge,
0:39.8	we may not want to, but we need to talk about COVID. Keep listening.
0:50.0	From WPR.
0:54.4	It's to the best of our knowledge.
0:56.1	I'm Anne Strangeamps.
0:57.7	And this hour, we're going to make the case for why you and I and all of us need to talk about COVID.
1:05.3	I know.
1:06.2	It was five years ago.
1:07.9	Five years ago this month, actually, that the pandemic began, and it's hard to
1:12.0	calculate the scale of the loss. Almost seven million people died worldwide, more than a million
1:18.3	in the U.S. alone. But then multiply that by the number of people who knew and loved them,
1:24.1	and that is an astounding measure of grief.
1:33.6	And then beyond that, all the other intangible losses, the work lives changed, offices shuttered, school years missed, relationships broken.
1:37.7	For me personally, there was my life before COVID and my life after COVID, and they are
1:43.0	very different.
1:44.6	I'm guessing many of you might say the same.
1:48.2	But, and here's my point, we don't talk about it.
	...

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