Dr. Rebecca Weintraub Brendel, associate director for the Center for Bioethics and president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) comments on, “The ripple effects of what we’ve been through, we are only beginning to see.”
Dr. Brendel noted that grief from a death affects a wide range of people beyond those who might be mentioned in an obituary. For example, many coronavirus patients have died without family by their side because of social distancing, she said, so already overburdened health workers have often stepped in almost as surrogates in their last moments.