Newspaper's powerful front page captures reality of the coronavirus

The New York Times’ front page has captured the horrifying reality of the coronavirus as it ravages the US.

On Sunday, the Times splashed COVID-19 on its front page with the headline: US Deaths Near 100,000: An Incalculable Loss without any pictures.

Instead of a news article, the paper published the names of 1000 of those who died along with a small description of them and where they lived. It runs inside the paper too.

“Numbers alone cannot possibly measure the impact of the coronavirus on America, whether it’s the number of patients treated, jobs interrupted or lives cut short,” the article reads.

Among those listed include 25-year-old Hailey Herrera from New York City who was “a budding therapist with a gift for empathy” and Chicago resident Mary Virginia McKeon, 65, who loved art and “devoured” it in “every medium”.

Eighty-seven-year-old Angelo Piro, from New York City, was “known for serenading friends with Tony Bennett songs” and Robert Crahen, 87, of the state of Wisconsin was nicknamed “Boxcar Bob” due to his “luck in shaking dice”.

The article adds none of the names listed “were mere numbers”.

The US has more deaths from coronavirus than any other country.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the US has more than 1.6 million cases of coronavirus and more than 96,000 deaths.

Simone Landon, assistant editor of the Times’ graphics desk, told Times Insider the idea was to show how the virus had taken the lives of many different people from a variety of backgrounds and ages.

Ms Landon added “there’s a little bit of fatigue” in just showing people data about the virus currently.

Tom Bodkin, chief creative officer of The Times, said he can’t remember any front pages in his 40 years at the paper which didn’t have a picture.

‘1000 names, 1000 stories’

The Times shared its front page on Twitter and one woman tweeted it showed “1000 names, 1000 stories”.

Another called it “devastating”.

“Shocking and sad,” one man tweeted.

“The death toll is a number, what each life represents is not,” another commented.

Trump tees off

President Donald Trump spent Saturday playing golf for the first time since declaring the pandemic two months ago.

The US is currently observing the Memorial Day long weekend with a public holiday on Monday.

The golf outing came a day after Mr Trump said houses of worship are “essential” and he demanded that governors allow them to reopen during the holiday weekend.

It also followed guidance from Dr Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, that it was OK for people to be outdoors this weekend as long as they took appropriate safety precautions.

Mr Trump pulled away from the White House on a sunny morning wearing a white polo shirt, white cap and dark slacks. Photographs that appeared later on Twitter showed him swinging a golf club and driving alone in a cart on the course at his private Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.

The White House had no comment on the president’s activities at the club, but said he and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had discussed the pandemic’s effect on the global economy on Saturday.

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Mr Trump levied frequent criticism of Barack Obama’s regular golf outings when he was president.

“Can you believe that with all of the problems and difficulties facing the US, President Obama spent the day playing golf. Worse than Carter,” Mr Trump tweeted in October 2014 during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, comparing Mr Obama to former president Jimmy Carter.

With The Associated Press

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