• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, November 27, 2020

COVID-19 conspiracy theorists need a few more TV news visuals to make their final decisions -- something TV, social media and other media can provide.

We speak of rows of freezer trucks set up as temporary morgues camped out at hospitals parking locations in New York City. Seems the bodies are piling up -- inside those trucks.

No, this isn’t a series on AMC Network, or another TV network that shows lots of dead people on TV programs. It's real. Just like the pandemic death tolls.

Recent reports from New York City says more than 600 bodies, due to COVID-19, have gone unclaimed -- families unable to pay for burials or due to the medical examiner’s office failure to track down family members of the deceased.

One version of the story came by way of CNBC, with video, showing a row of morgue refrigerators tractor trailers in operation. Until now, there has been many COVID-associated images of people being wheeled into hospital on stretchers, patients in the hospitals on ventilators, as well as video of hardworking medical professionals.

All these visuals come amid lesser emotional visuals -- those usual charts of data and hot spots -- 12.3 million COVID-19 cases so far, and almost 260,000 dead. Plus, infections and departed numbers expected to soar this winter season.

President Trump, in reacting to the data, has said: “It is what it is.” A lesser empathetic response, for sure.

And if we double these numbers -- say 500,000 deaths, does that mean double the outrage from elected officials, medical practitioners, or affected family members that more isn’t being done?

Credit TV news networks and programmers for being judicious in eliciting graphic images of what this pandemic really is on a personal level. We have seen many affected citizens in despair -- stunned, crying, emotionally-sapped.

All that gives us a partial window into what our imagination -- TV-affected or otherwise -- conjures up. Perhaps that is all we can take.