COVID victims: In death as in life, the poor remain unseen

Leading obituary writers discuss who gets to be publicly memorialised in death - and who doesn't

The New York Times on Sunday 24 May 2020 prints the names of 1,000 US victims of COVID, as the country's pandemic death toll neared 100,000 |Richard Levine / Alamy Stock Photo

After two years of COVID and a global death toll of more than six million, the pandemic has revealed a stark truth: death is the great leveller.

But this much hasn’t been clear from the obituary pages of news outlets around the world, which have mostly documented the pandemic-related passings of only the rich and famous.

In death as in life, the poor — on whom the pandemic has taken the greatest toll — remain mostly unseen.

“COVID-19 itself is egalitarian, so Prince Charles has it, Camilla has it,” obituaries scholar Nigel Starck tells openDemocracy on Zoom from Adelaide, Australia, referring to how the virus can infect anyone.

But just as those from lower socio-economic backgrounds have borne the brunt of the pandemic, COVID has discriminated in terms of obituaries, Starck says. “It hasn’t produced the same inclusiv…