COVID-19 Outbreak (Update: More than 2.9M cases and 132,313 deaths in US)

My sister forwarded some information from a local news station in which it was reported that there have been 124 infections and 17 fatalities among 155 residents in the nursing home my mom was in, and 34 staff have been infected. My mom died there on March 5, under hospice care, in respiratory failure and on supplemental oxygen.

Seeing the reported data of the localized outbreak raises some questions in our family, but also with the knowledge that my mom's health was poor, and included a diagnosis of interstitial lung disease several years ago, though the certainty of that would become less clear in the time that followed.

We will never know if she was infected, though there have been no indications of transmission among family and friends that we know of, which leaves me doubtful. If there's a silver-lining, it's that she passed away days before the crisis really set in so we were able to be with her and then honor her with a proper funeral. Also the knowing that if she wasn't infected, she almost certainly would have been eventually.

Surreal, though, to know that so many people we would have encountered in our visits there have suffered on such a scale. The numbers are staggering and really drive home just how devastating this illness can be to vulnerable people.