COVID-19 Pandemic Euphemism of the Day: ‘An Unapproved Manner’

The Philadelphia Inquirer:

The horror of the coronavirus pandemic took an especially macabre turn on Sunday afternoon when a Ford pickup truck pulled up behind the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office with five or six bagged bodies stacked in its open cargo bed.

The driver got out, spoke briefly to a medical examiner’s employee who seemed unnerved by the delivery, and then climbed onto the cargo bed, walking on bodies that initially had been covered by mats, according to an Inquirer photographer who was working near the site in University City. He pulled the bodies by their feet to the edge of the truck bed. The remains were offloaded one at a time onto gurneys and wheeled up a ramp into a refrigerated trailer. The unidentified driver wore torn jeans, a blue jacket, and a dark blue cap.

The Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed that a transfer of human remains from a local hospital had arrived in “an unapproved manner.”

This is one where the pictures tell more than a thousand words. Horrific. These aren’t bad people. No one wants to see dead bodies piled in the back of a pickup like bags of sand. This is the result of a system that is overwhelmed by the pandemic’s death toll.

★ Tuesday, 21 April 2020