Lawyer Daniel Uhlfelder has been going to Florida beaches dressed as the grim reaper. As he said, “I think it is premature that we open our beaches. I think the danger of bringing people here to our area and spreading the virus is going to prolong the recovery we have. It is too soon and not appropriate.” “The grim reaper represents death. This is a deadly virus. It’s a global pandemic,” he said in a televised news broadcast. By visiting Florida beaches he is shaming the behavior of congregating on the beaches. The experience was not entirely pleasant. Uhlfelder says he was heckled on the beach: people took photos of him, called him a jerk and some other, more unpleasant names too. “We aren’t at the point now where we have enough testing, enough data, enough preparation for what’s going to be coming to our state from all over the world from this pandemic,” the lawyer told CNN.
Most people have reacted positively to the stunt and Uhlfelder says he is happy that his dry sense of humor has cut through in landscape when some of the loudest voices have been anti-shutdown protesters carrying guns. He just hopes his protest empowers others to do the same
As a child visiting the beach I used to love digging in the sand and even loved getting buried up to my neck in sand. This love of digging in the sand suddenly reminded me of mass graves being dug in Brazil. Graves diggers are struggling to keep up with the demand to bury bodies while Brazil’s leader Jair Bolsonaro claimed the virus is a “little flu,” much like our own President. At first graves were dug individually. Caskets would arrive every 5 minutes with the caskets lowered in by ropes. Five minutes later another family would enter the area to bury their loved one.
These individual burials had to be changed into on large trench dug by back hoes where the caskets would be stacked and then covered as families stood around the edge of the large trench. This has become “the only option” because it is “humanly impossible” to dig the required number of graves, says Manue Viana, who runs a funeral company and is president of the Syndicate of Funeral Businesses in Amazonas. According to Viana, the city’s daily average of deaths has risen from 30 to more than 100. The mayor’s office confirmed to NPR that there have been 340 burials just in the past three days.
Cemeteries and hospitals have been overwhelmed by a surge in the number of deaths, most of which are not registered in official Covid-19 statistics because of a lack of testing and bureaucratic delays. A Brazilian funeral director said simply, “We are living through a nightmare.”
With states in America being encouraged to open up by President Trump, a new study said that Covid-19 deaths in the United States will rise to more than 3,000 a day by June 1, 2020, with new confirmed cases surging to about 200,000 daily. Trump has called Americans warriors as he sends them out to face the grim reaper.