It can’t be denied that Covid has been the main contributing factor in many people’s deaths. But aside of only a handful of instances it doesn’t get mentioned as such in local obituaries. I know frequently people do not make public information of how their loved ones have perished. For example, you’ll very seldom see someone’s cause of death as being suicide. But given the wide swath that Covid cuts, I’m surprised that it is not listed as the cause of death more often. I’m wondering why that is.
We included it when my mom died from Covid last December. It was import to us that it was documented.
I haven’t seen a list of obits since I stopped getting a newspaper delivered. I’ll take the OP at face value, and suggest that people tend to be non-specific in the public obit. (ITD, I respect your choice.) For instance, you see a lot of “peacefully while surrounded by loved ones”, but not a lot of “succumbed to colo-rectal cancer, specifically, if you must know.”
And of course, there are a lot of people like Colin Powell, who did die from COVID but he was also 84 years old and had Parkinson’s and multiple myeloma.
Or for that matter, my dad’s 78-year-old friend who was also obese, had uncontrolled Type 2 diabetes, and my dad believes he was also an alcoholic.
p.s. Sometimes you can piece it together, if they suggest memorial donations to places like the ALS Foundation, a suicide prevention hotline, etc.
My understanding is that, in most cases, actual obituaries are written by the family or loved ones (or, in some cases, by the deceased themselves, obviously written before they died). They aren’t legal notices, and so, as I understand it, there’s no requirement to list a cause of death.
As @bobot notes, I don’t see too many obituaries which list a cause – they are more likely to say something like, “passed away peacefully at home,” “passed away after a brief illness,” “passed while surrounded by loved ones,” “died peacefully,” etc.
I’m scanning the obituary page for my home town newspaper right now, and I see only one obituary (out of several dozen) which lists a cause of death (“after a long battle with congestive heart failure”).
I would imagine that a cause only gets mentioned when the family wants to make note of the circumstances, for whatever reason (such as raising awareness of a health condition, or asking for donations to a particular cause, as @nearwildheaven notes). In the case of deaths due to COVID-19, I could certainly see some families wanting to have this publicly noted, as @IvoryTowerDenizen did, to emphasize the dangers of the disease. But, overall, I imagine that most families feel that it’s private information.
They’re often conflated, but death notices aren’t the same thing as obituaries. A death notice is a few sentences, and is usually written by the deceased’s family. An obituary is a full story, and is written by a professional writer. Obituaries do usually mention the cause of death, but then, being longer, they have more room for that sort of thing.
Thank you for the clarification – it doesn’t help that my home town paper calls them “obituaries,” when it looks like they’re death notices, as they are submitted by the families. Their obituary submission information specifies that the family is to provide “the exact text you want to be printed.”
I would imagine that “true obituaries” (i.e., those written by a professional writer) are generally reserved for celebrities of varying levels of stature (because they were well-known, and thus, their death is newsworthy), people whose passing (or life story) is deemed to be of interest to the newspaper’s staff, and/or people whose families might be willing to pay to have a professional obituary written.
I came across one death notice/obituary recently that did not say how they died, but did go out of their way to say the decedent did not die of covid.
Given the political nature of COVID now, a lot of people are probably just hoping to dodge the recreational outrage that they’d be the target of, if it were included.
“It’s bad enough mom died of COVID, but holy fuck do I not want to deal with the family members who all think COVID is a hoax…I’ll just leave it out.”
In the parlance of my local paper, a death notice is a very short free listing, usually 2 or 3 sentences. An obituary is essentially a paid ad, and can be as long as the family wishes.
My experience as well, I went to the local paper when my dad died and they gave me a form to fill out and told me if I provided a picture they would print that as well (for an extra charge). I wrote a good three paragraphs and provided a picture of him him in his younger days, because you never get another chance to make a last impression.
Never actually thought of a “death notice” being different from an obituary until today. Death notice sounds like something the police or paper write up when there is an accident or murder.
Or, as one sees sometimes in r/HermanCainAwards, “…I am the family member who thinks COVID is a hoax, and don’t want to give readers a ‘told you so’”.
There’s a lot of this going on. During Trump’s admin, people refused treatment because they didn’t want to contribute to any COVID-related statistics that might hurt Trump. Many still don’t want to help “confirm” that COVID exists. Such people are definitely not going to want that in their obituaries.
But apart from that, obits are really just there to let you know someone died. It’s not there to satisfy curiosity or confirm our priors. Often we’d like more information, but we’re not entitled to it.