Pamela Addison is, in her own words, “one of the most timid people in the world”. Certainly not the type of person who would send an opinion essay to a newspaper, start a support group for strangers, or ask a US senator to vote on $ 1.9 trillion legislation.
But in the past five months, she has done all these things.
Her husband, Martin Addison, a 44-year-old health care professional from New Jersey, died of a coronavirus in April, after a sick month. The last time she saw him was when he was put in an ambulance. At 37, Mrs. Addison was left to care for a 2-year-old daughter and young son, and to survive on her own.
“Seeing the impact my story had on people – it was very therapeutic and healing for me,” she said. “And knowing that I am doing this to honor my husband gives me the greatest joy, because I am doing this for him.”
With the number of coronavirus deaths in the United States – more than 535,000 people – thousands of stories like hers come. Many people who have lost loved ones, or whose lives have been affected by long-standing symptoms, have resorted to political action.
There is Marjorie Roberts, who fell ill while running a gift shop at a hospital in Atlanta and now has lung scars; Mary Wilson-Snipes, still on oxygen more than two months after returning home from the hospital; and John Lancos, who lost his 41-year-old wife on April 23.
In January, they and dozens of others participated in an advocacy training session on Zoom, led by a group called Covid Survivors for Change. This month, the group organized virtual meetings with the offices of 16 senators, and more than 50 members of the group lobbied for the coronavirus aid package.
The immediate aim of the training session was to teach people how to do things like put pressure on a senator. The long-term goal was to tackle the problem of numbers.
The numbers are dehumanizing, as activists like to say. In sufficient quantities – 536,472 on Wednesday morning, for example – they are also numb. That is why converting numbers to people is so often the task of activists who seek policy changes after a tragedy.