The magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic has been difficult to comprehend. How does one begin to process over 200,000 lives lost in the United States in the midst of an ongoing crisis? Amidst a long, never-ending news cycle, and the now routine reporting of daily cases and deaths, it can be difficult to see this loss in human terms. Every person that has died was the center of someone’s world, and behind every number was a face and a story.
The Faces of COVID project, launched by our friend Alex Goldstein of 90 West, is a digital memorial project designed with three primary goals in mind:
Lift up the names, faces, and stories behind the numbing statistics to preserve the dignity to those we’ve lost to the pandemic and show compassion and empathy to the families who mourn.
Provide a measure of accountability for our failures in national leadership by challenging efforts to rewrite the history of the pandemic, promote misinformation, or downplay the extent of the losses. We cannot allow history to be rewritten.
Uplift local journalism at a time when it is being hollowed out, by providing a platform with expansive reach to share the important work of community-level reporters who are doing their best to tell these stories under challenging circumstances.
Opalite Media produced a 3-part digital video series memorializing victims of COVID-19 as part of the Faces of COVID project. The video series remembers firefighters, teachers, and healthcare workers lost to the virus. These videos have been viewed over 1 million times across digital platforms.
Faces of COVID: Remembering Healthcare Workers
Faces of COVID: Remembering Teachers
Faces of COVID: Remembering Firefighters
Comments