The Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board will review advertisements featuring Governor Kim Reynolds, which were funded through federal COVID-19 relief dollars.

The board’s executive director Mike Marshall told Bleeding Heartland on June 18 that some commercials from the “Step Up, Stop the Spread” campaign launched last November “are now under review by the Ethics Board.” Earlier this month, State Auditor Rob Sand asked the board to consider whether the ads violated Iowa’s law banning state officials from engaging in “self-promotion with taxpayer funds.”

Marshall said he anticipates the ethics board will discuss the matter in closed session at its next meeting, scheduled for August 12.

Richard Lindgren: The “commonweal” of public health has taken a back seat to political resentment and anti-science myths propagated by social media. -promoted by Laura Belin

Despite a strong start at vaccinating its populace against COVID-19, my former home state of Iowa has begun to slip in the national rankings in its percentage of vaccinated residents. In Texas, some hospital workers have taken their management to court to fight suspensions for refusing the vaccine, despite experiencing over 52,000 deaths of Texans from COVID in those same hospitals.

What is going on here? Sometimes a simple scatter-graph tells a great story:

State Representative Ras Smith became Iowa’s first well-known Democratic candidate for governor on June 15, declaring in an upbeat campaign video, “I believe that Iowa’s greatest days are ahead of us.”

Governor Kim Reynolds has been lucky at key points in her political career. Terry Branstad passed over more experienced contenders to select her as his 2010 running mate, allowing a little-known first-term state senator to become a statewide elected official. Six years later, Donald Trump won the presidency and named Branstad as an ambassador, setting Reynolds up to become governor without having to win a GOP primary first.

Most important, Reynolds has enjoyed a Republican trifecta her entire four years as governor. Not only has she been able to sign much of her wish list into law, she has not needed to worry that state lawmakers would closely scrutinize her administration’s work or handling of public funds.

During the legislative session that wrapped up last month, the GOP-controlled House and Senate rejected every attempt to make the governor’s spending decisions more transparent. They declined to hold even one hearing about questionable uses of federal COVID-19 relief funds or practices at state agencies that disadvantaged thousands of Iowans.

Approximately 702,800 Iowans were enrolled in some version of the Medicaid program last month, up by roughly 100,000 since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020, according to analysis by Charles Gaba at the ACA Signups website.

The biggest increase was in the Iowa Health and Wellness Plan, the state’s version of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Gaba’s analysis indicates that some 225,300 Iowans were participating in that plan as of May 2021, up from about 177,200 people fourteen months earlier.

Enrollment in traditional Medicaid increased by a smaller rate from about 425,000 in March 2020 to some 477,500 last month. The federal government recently released statistics on state level Medicaid enrollments from July 2019 through December 2020. Gaba’s estimates for 2021 are based on monthly reports published by the Iowa Department of Human Services, adjusted to compensate for how closely the state’s numbers tracked with the federal figures for 2020.

Gaba commented on his website,

COVID-19 vaccinations increased significantly in Ohio after Governor Mike DeWine announced vaccinated residents would be eligible for five $1 million lottery drawings or full-ride scholarships to state universities. In contrast, vaccinations have been plummeting in Iowa lately. Most county health departments have been declining their vaccine allocations. Average daily shots are down 80 percent from their peak in early April.

Eighteen states and Washington, DC are now ahead of Iowa in terms of percentage of the population fully vaccinated, and 22 states plus DC have a higher percentage of residents who have received at least one shot. Less than two weeks ago, Iowa ranked sixteenth in the country on that metric.

Governor Kim Reynolds isn’t worried, though. She told reporters on June 2, “I am really happy with where we’re at” in terms of vaccinations. From Brianne Pfannenstiel’s article for the Des Moines Register,

A special investigation by the State Auditor’s office asserted on June 3 that Governor Kim Reynolds violated Iowa law by using $152,585 in federal COVID-19 relief funds to purchase “online and televised ads containing the Governor’s voice, image, and name.”

Less than 30 minutes after the auditor’s report was published, Reynolds responded in a news release that the law “clearly allows” such use of public money in the context of a public health disaster emergency.

A few hours later, State Auditor Rob Sand defended his conclusions in a new written statement.

My non-lawyer’s reading of the relevant statutes aligns with the governor’s interpretation. But while legal points could be argued, one indisputable fact is that all parties involved should have discussed these findings prior to the report’s publication, instead of duking it out in news releases today.

Paul Trombino III will be the next public works director of city of Greeley, Colorado, the city announced on May 28. He was hired following a national search, according to a news release enclosed in full below. The job was posted in February, so Trombino must have applied only weeks after becoming Iowa’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management director.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ office announced Trombino’s impending departure on May 20. The news surprised many observers, since the governor had worked closely with her chief operating officer for two years and awarded him a large bonus in February, ensuring he wouldn’t take a pay cut when transitioning to the Homeland Security position.

Trombino’s resignation from his Iowa government post becomes effective June 3. Reynolds hasn’t yet announced her choice to run the Homeland Security agency, which oversees disaster preparedness and relief operations and has administered tens of millions of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief funds.

Most of the CARES Act funding transferred to Homeland Security is tied to the state or local match for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Public Assistance Program. Reynolds also approved a $1 million transfer for “State Government COVID Staffing,” from which $448,449 was used to cover personnel costs in the governor’s office. The remaining $551,551 set aside for that purpose remains unspent, a state database shows. A Homeland Security communications staffer told me last year, “Although that funding was transferred to our department to process, we are not the decision makers on how it will be spent.”

Racial disparities in Iowa’s COVID-19 vaccinations have narrowed during the eight weeks since all adults became eligible to get a shot. However, even with many vaccination sites now accepting walk-ins, reducing barriers associated with online scheduling, people of color and especially Black and Latino Iowans have received fewer doses per capita than white people.

In addition, county-level data show a wide gap between the Iowa counties with the highest and lowest vaccination rates. As in most other states, vaccination rates appear to be correlated with political and demographic features. Residents of more urban and more Democratic counties are more likely to be vaccinated than those living in rural and heavily Republican areas.

Paul Trombino III is resigning as director of Iowa’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Department, effective June 3, the governor’s office announced on May 20. A news release said Trombino was “leaving his position to pursue other opportunities.”

Governor Kim Reynolds has 30 days to consider any bills sent to her during the final days of a legislative session, but she could hardly wait 30 seconds to sign one of the bills approved hours before the Iowa House and Senate adjourned for the year.

The governor’s office announced at 12:36 am that Reynolds had signed House File 847, an education bill amended on May 19 to prohibit school districts and local governments from following best practices for slowing the spread of COVID-19.

Moments earlier, Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley had brought the bill to the governor’s desk.

The three Republicans now representing Iowa in the U.S. House rarely land on opposite sides in a floor vote. But Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-02) parted ways with most of her GOP colleagues in March by voting to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.

That wasn’t an isolated incident. Miller-Meeks joined Democrats in two more closely watched House votes on May 19, while Representatives Ashley Hinson (IA-01) and Randy Feenstra (IA-04) stuck with the majority of the Republican caucus.

Keegan Jones is a lifelong Iowan and 2013 graduate of Fort Dodge Senior High. He currently works as a financial analyst and consultant. -promoted by Laura Belin

I’ve been lucky to travel all over the U.S. and around the globe during my professional career. Every time I tell a stranger I’m from Iowa, I’m confronted with the same question: “Why would anyone want to live in Iowa?”

I often asked my parents the same question when I was growing up, but over time I grew to appreciate being an Iowan and love to brag about our state. Telling people about what it means to be “Iowa nice” and showing off pictures of a beautiful sunset over a cornfield makes it easy to show why Iowa can be great place to live. But convincing someone to move here? That’s another story.

In the hopes of attracting people to move here, I wanted to examine all the compelling reasons why Iowa is a great place to live.

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks is among three Republicans who will be fined $500 for violating the mask mandate on the House floor, Congressional correspondents reported on May 18. Seven more House Republicans received warnings for breaking the same rule. The mask refusers include some on the far-right wing of the GOP caucus: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Thomas Massie, Chip Roy, and Louie Gohmert.

Under House rules, $500 will be deducted from members’ salaries for a first violation of the mask requirement. A second offense will bring a $2,500 fine.

Miller-Meeks declared on May 14 that the House should set “an example for the rest of the country,” following updated guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control saying fully vaccinated people could safely forgo face coverings in most situations.

Lori Hunt is a Democrat from Polk County, a member of the Planned Parenthood Speakers Bureau, professional cat wrangler, writer, breadwinner, and bread baker. -promoted by Laura Belin

One of the first questions people ask when you meet someone is what do you do for a living? Where do you work?

If you are in between jobs or not quite at your desired one, you sigh, explain your circumstances, and give an elevator pitch as to how it happened and what you’re looking for. Our job is so tied into our identity and self worth. 

I was furloughed from my retail job at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was scheduled to start another job with the U.S. Census Bureau, but that got put on hold as well. In March, the warehouse called my manager at home and told her of the plans to temporarily shut down the store. She came over, locked up, and sent us home. 

In the rush to get out, I didn’t even grab my empty Tupperware and cheese in the fridge. We all figured we’d be back in a month. Not so likely.

Luana Nelson-Brown is the founder and executive director of the Iowa Coalition for Collective Change. -promoted by Laura Belin

A network of people across the state of Iowa are dedicated to supporting and assisting survivors of violent crime. The job of these violent crime victim advocates, while fulfilling, isn’t easy. 

Most of us may not know what it’s like to experience crime, but we understand that these unexpected events can carry a high cost, mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially. 

Violent crime has always existed, and the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to an increase in violent crime across the nation, with Iowa being no exception. Victim advocates are working harder than ever to ensure that the harm caused to survivors is as minimal as possible. 

While defending her approach to the COVID-19 pandemic last year, Governor Kim Reynolds repeatedly asserted that Iowa was seeing an “uptick” in suicides, and listed suicides among the mental health problems that were “exponentially increasing.”

Preliminary data on Iowa deaths by suicide in 2020 paint a more complex picture. An estimated 557 Iowans took their own lives last year, the highest number recorded in two decades. However, many of the increased deaths occurred during January and February, before COVID-19 was identified in Iowa and well before any restrictions were imposed to slow the spread of the novel virus.

Governor Kim Reynolds told Iowans this week to “lean further into normal,” since “There’s no reason for us to continue to fear COVID-19 any longer.”

Iowa Department of Public Health Director Kelly Garcia obliged with new guidance urging schools and child care providers to “approach COVID-19 like other child illnesses.”

To justify abandoning precautions like mandatory face coverings and quarantines for children exposed to coronavirus, Garcia misrepresented the latest advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

In the natural order of things, members of Congress brag about the federal assistance they fought to obtain for their constituents.

The Republicans who represent Iowa in the U.S. House and Senate turned that formula on its head this week. Every one cheered the news that tens of thousands of Iowans will soon lose the federal government support they depend on.

Governor Kim Reynolds showed yet again on May 11 that she will happily undermine vulnerable Iowans’ household budgets in order to please Republican allies and business lobby groups.

But her plan to turn down tens of millions of dollars a week in federal unemployment benefits rests on flawed premises.

Jeff Clothier reacts to the news that Governor Kim Reynolds is pulling Iowa out of federal pandemic-related unemployment programs, effective June 12. -promoted by Laura Belin

I work as a trainer, primarily for Unemployment Insurance, for Iowa Workforce Development. Between May and September 2020 I received unemployment benefits, having been riffed from my corporate job due to COVID-19.

Some facts are left out of the discussion around ending the $300 federal contribution to weekly benefit checks for Iowa recipients. Governor Reynolds and others insinuate – without much evidence – that these federal supplements to unemployment insurance are a disincentive to people returning to the workforce.

Ira Lacher: Star Trek postulated that galaxy exploration is a never-ending mission; we must consider combating COVID-19 in the same vein. -promoted by Laura Belin

Remember “flatten the curve”? That was the former administration’s non-policy, which basically involved keeping America’s woefully inadequate hospital system from being overwhelmed and our nation becoming the nonstop outdoor crematorium that is today’s India. Even under that mismatched crazy quilt of how to deal with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, nearly 600,000 and counting have died on these shores, and cases, though declining, continue to add up, by the thousands per day, with lasting consequences unknown.

It was thought that the advent and mass distribution of superbly effective vaccines would eliminate the threat since, public health officials surmised, once we attained herd immunity through vaccination, there would be little fear of virus spread.

But a not-so-funny thing happened on the way to that practicality: millions of Americans, and many American civic leaders, have brainlessly rejected this totally efficacious — and, it is reminded, FREE — solution that can do for COVID-19 what we did with polio and smallpox: get rid of it.

The governor signed this bill on May 20. Original post follows.

“I look forward to signing this important legislation into law!” Governor Kim Reynolds tweeted on May 6, after the Iowa House and Senate approved a bill purportedly banning “vaccine passports.”

House File 889 fits a pattern of Republican bills that are best described as solutions in search of a problem. No state or local government agency intends to issue COVID-19 vaccine passports, nor are Iowa-based businesses rushing to require that customers show proof of coronavirus vaccinations.

A “message” bill can be useful politically, if it pleases a constituency Republicans need in the next election. The odd thing about this last-minute push is that Iowa’s most vocal vaccine skeptics don’t support the bill heading to the governor’s desk. On the contrary, they’re demanding a veto in the name of freedom.

A record number of Americans and Iowans passed away over the last year. The COVID-19 pandemic caused the largest share of the excess deaths and indirectly contributed to many fatalities from other causes (such as heart attacks or strokes).

Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics, Rachel Kidman, Rachel Margolis, and Emily Smith-Greenaway estimated that as of February 2021, approximately 37,300 children in the U.S. under age 18 “had lost at least 1 parent due to COVID-19, three-quarters of whom were adolescents.” Using figures for excess deaths during the pandemic (as opposed to confirmed coronavirus fatalities), the researchers estimated that 43,000 children in the U.S. have lost a parent to the virus. Their study used demographic modeling techniques as opposed to survey data.

The Iowa Department of Public Health’s spokesperson did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiry in early April about whether the agency has tracked how many Iowans who died of COVID-19 had children under age 18 or dependent adult children living in their home, and how many Iowans who died in the pandemic were primary caregivers to children (but not their parents).

Even without firm numbers, it’s clear that far more people than usual are experiencing their first Mother’s Day without their own mothers. This holiday can be one of the toughest milestones soon after a bereavement, and even many years later.

U.S. Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks has been on the road and on social media encouraging Iowans to get vaccinated for COVID-19, sometimes even administering the shots herself.

In a video released on May 4, Miller-Meeks highlighted her medical background and advocated for vaccines as a way of “getting our lives back to normal,” while acknowledging that getting a shot “is your decision to make.”

She was less tolerant of personal choices when approached the next day by a journalist seeking an interview.

Greg Cohen: We need to stop pretending the pandemic is over, because it’s not. -promoted by Laura Belin

Seven months ago, I wrote a letter to The Chariton Leader about my experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic — what was going right, what was going wrong, what frustrated me, and how America had responded. Here’s my follow up.

After more than one year, I hugged my children and grandchildren two weeks ago. I hugged my sister and brother in law last week.  Although the COVID-19 pandemic is not over, all of us have finally been vaccinated and we are now reasonably  safe to be together.  It has been the longest year of my life.

For the last year, health care workers and scientists have toiled tirelessly to protect us. Medications have greatly reduced the chances of our being hospitalized, and we have cut the death rate by 70 percent. After a terrible surge this winter, when I diagnosed two to ten people every day with COVID-related illness, I still diagnose people with COVID–19, but far fewer of them. This makes me hopeful we can end this pandemic sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, I fear what is happening now in Iowa and across America is undermining that work.

State officials deployed “strike teams” involving the Iowa National Guard to more businesses last year than previously acknowledged.

Records the Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) released on April 26 show seventeen workplaces received COVID-19 testing assistance through a strike team. The agency had stated in January that only ten workplaces (operated by nine companies) had strike team visits. Several newly-disclosed events benefited businesses linked to Governor Kim Reynolds’ major campaign donors.

Iowa used the strike teams mostly during the spring of 2020, when COVID-19 testing supplies were scarce. However, a strike team was sent to Iowa Select Farms administrative headquarters in mid-July, more than five weeks after the state had stopped providing testing help to other business. That company’s owners are Reynolds’ largest campaign contributors.

The governor asserted at a January news conference that the state had facilitated coronavirus testing for more than 60 companies, saying no firm was denied assistance. The newly-released records show nineteen businesses received testing kits from the state, and another nineteen were directed to a nearby Test Iowa site where their employees could schedule appointments.

The public health department’s spokesperson Sarah Ekstrand has not explained why she provided incomplete information about the strike team program in January. Nor has she clarified what criteria state officials used to determine which companies received which kind of testing assistance.

The governor’s spokesperson Pat Garrett did not respond to any of Bleeding Heartland’s emails on this subject. Reynolds walked away when I tried to ask her about the strike team decisions at a media gaggle on April 28.

Governor Kim Reynolds revealed on April 29 that she is sending back $95 million in federal funds designated for testing students for COVID-19.

During a Fox News event featuring Republican governors, Reynolds said of President Joe Biden,

I think he thinks the COVID just started. I just returned 95 million dollars because they sent an additional 95 million dollars to the state of Iowa to get our kids back in the classroom by doing surveillance testing. And I said, “We’ve been in the classroom since August. Here’s your 95 million dollars back.”

Ira Lacher considers how to address COVID-19 vaccine resistance. -promoted by Laura Belin

Volunteering at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic recently, I encountered something making me start to believe that regardless of all the gloom surrounding who’s getting shots in America, we may be better off than we think.

A former colleague, one of the most egregious Trump supporters I’ve ever known, was there. For their second shot.

Eleven weeks after beginning to inspect workplace safety at the Iowa capitol, the state’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) informed legislative leaders about conditions “that may expose workers to COVID-19 hazards.” OSHA recommended “immediate corrective actions where needed,” as well as a review of safety and health practices “to ensure consistency” with advice from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control guidelines

What took them so long?

Ian Miller looks for clues on how many of Iowa’s COVID-19 fatalities might have been missed in official counts. -promoted by Laura Belin

Since the onset of the pandemic, I have been skeptical about official statistics on SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), particularly numbers of total infections and total deaths, whether from the state of Iowa or from the federal government. I share I.F. Stone’s operating assumption that all governments lie (which is not to say that governments always lie).

Furthermore, Governor Kim Reynolds has done nothing to earn any benefit of the doubt, with her opaque dealings, refusal to take leadership on community PPE use, and general underselling of the pandemic.

It is with this point of view that I saw Laura Belin’s tweet from April 17. In sharing a chart Charles Gaba created, which stated that 1 out of every 355 New Jersey residents had died of COVID-19, Laura wrote:

Passing a budget for the fiscal year that begins on July 1 is the most important unfinished business for the Iowa legislature’s regular 2021 session. But House and Senate Republican leaders haven’t found consensus on spending targets for several large pieces of the roughly $8 billion state budget.

In a move without precedent in decades, Senate Republicans declined this this year to participate in the joint appropriations subcommittees where lawmakers review and discuss agency spending requests. Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver and Appropriations Committee chair Tim Kraayenbrink did not respond to Bleeding Heartland’s inquiries about who made the decision or why.

State Representative Ray Sorensen included two negative memes about COVID-19 vaccines in his latest weekly newsletter on Iowa legislative happenings.

Since early March, the Republican has regularly shared memes purporting to be humorous near the end of his online updates about bills the House has approved or is considering. The edition Sorensen sent out late last week, covering week 13 of the legislative session, included the following two images, interspersed with memes mocking public assistance programs, feminists, environmentalists, President Joe Biden, and leftist intellectuals.

Iowa State University economist Dave Swenson compares Iowa’s per capita COVID-19 case rates and death rates to the numbers for neighboring states, the national average, and the best-performing state (Vermont). -promoted by Laura Belin

It is good that Iowans are getting their COVID-19 vaccinations apace. Iowa now ranks in the top half of states for having administered one dose, as gauged by percentage of population, and in the top third of the states for having administered a second.

No matter how well the state performs on vaccinations in the next few months, though, it will never excuse Iowa’s abysmal record over the past year in caring for its residents.

Iowa ranks seventh worst among the states in its incidence of coronavirus cases per capita, and 17th worst in its death rate. In short, Iowa’s political leadership, its perceived commercial imperatives, and its citizens unarguably came up short when compared with the rest of the U.S.

Charles Bruner is a longtime advocate for policies that support children and strengthen families. -promoted by Laura Belin

About this essay

I studied political science at the beginning of the 1970s at one of the elitist of universities, Stanford University. My graduate school class, if not all radicals, shared a serious critique of American government and the military-industrial complex, the Vietnam war, the academic privilege and not freedom that embodied the Stanford administration, and the failure for society to listen to youth and follow-through on the vision expressed in the decidedly liberal document, The Port Huron Statement.

I returned to Iowa in 1975 feeling alienated and full of angst at my better understanding of the darker side of American politics. But I had no clue how to contribute to changing it. Fortunately, I found a group of 20-somethings in Iowa – largely through the Community Action Research Group (Iowa’s Public Interest Research Group) – doing that work in the policy field on the environment. They connected me to a job at the Iowa Welfare Association funded by the Compensatory Education and Training Act, the federal jobs program that provided nonprofits with funding to create jobs. It gave me space to learn and grow, as it did for others in my group.

Iowa’s official COVID-19 website added 68 more deaths over the weekend, bringing the state’s death toll to 5,822 (roughly one out of every 540 Iowans who was alive before the pandemic). The large increase was surprising; COVID-19 hospitalizations have been trending upward in recent weeks, but haven’t risen sharply enough to produce dozens of fatalities in just a few days.

It turns out that most of the newly reported deaths occurred more than three months ago.

As Iowa prepares to expand COVID-19 vaccine eligibility to all adults on April 5, racial and ethnic disparities in the state’s vaccination rates have narrowed slightly since Bleeding Heartland last reviewed this data four weeks ago. However, people of color have still received far fewer vaccine doses per capita, compared to white Iowans.

At least 1,588,117 COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered to Iowa residents, according to the state’s vaccination dashboard on April 4. At least 662,885 Iowans have received all required doses of a COVID-19 vaccine (that is, two shots of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or a single shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine). Another 368,646 Iowans “have received one dose of a two-dose COVID-19 vaccine series, but have not completed the series.”

Breaking down the numbers by race and ethnicity, it’s apparent that Iowa has a long way to go to achieve equity in vaccine distribution.

Governor Kim Reynolds signed Iowa on to a lawsuit challenging part of the federal government’s most recent COVID-19 relief package. Thirteen states filed suit in Alabama on March 31, charging that the American Rescue Plan “impermissibly seizes tax authority from the States.” Reynolds announced the lawsuit during a March 31 appearance on WHO Radio’s program hosted by Simon Conway. The Associated Press was first to report the news.

Evan Burger previously wrote about Iowa Congressional and state legislative redistricting scenarios. -promoted by Laura Belin

Today I’ll continue my ongoing series on redistricting with a deeper dive on Iowa legislative redistricting, using Story County as a case study. A few general updates to start:

First, the partisan battle lines over Iowa redistricting are starting to shape up. According to several press reports, including this recent Des Moines Register article, Republican leaders are floating the idea of suing the Census Bureau to get data earlier than September 30th:

Kathy Davis passed away on March 24, 2020, having fallen ill shortly after an overseas vacation with her husband. The Iowa Department of Public Health later determined that the retired community college counselor from Dubuque was the first Iowan to die of the novel coronavirus.

One year later, the state’s official website shows that 5,689 Iowans have died of COVID-19. The real death toll is somewhat higher, since the process of confirming and reporting coronavirus deaths usually involves weeks of delay. In addition, some Iowans who died in the early weeks of the pandemic may not have had a positive test during their illness.

This post attempts to put Iowa’s coronavirus fatality numbers into context. But since statistics don’t convey the loss that thousands of families have experienced, I hope readers will take time to reflect on those who have passed. The Dubuque Telegraph-Herald’s Bennet Goldstein wrote about Kathy Davis and her widower Chuck’s journey of bereavement. The Carroll Times Herald’s Jared Strong covered the aftermath of a card game among friends in Crawford County. Newspaper reporters from around the state have profiled hundreds of the dead as part of the Iowa Mourns series, available on the Des Moines Register’s website. One of those featured was Jay Daniels, a longtime family friend whose funeral we couldn’t attend, due to COVID safety protocols.

Bereavement on this scale is hard to fathom, especially in a culture some might call “grief-illiterate,” where death is often “unseen and denied.” Even so, it’s worth looking at the numbers.