are the forgotten frontline workers. We laud the nurses, doctors, and EMTs - rightfully so - but people like the funeral director who posted that comment in r/HermanCainAward deserve just as much acknowledgment, praise, and financial support.

Cries of help from him and people like Caitlin Doughty (an LA funeral home owner with a popular YouTube channel) have been going largely unnoticed because the general public still gets squicked out by the thought of death and dead bodies and consider people who chose career paths that involve close contact with dead bodies to be creepy weirdos to be avoided. Unfortunately, government officials at all levels seem to share in that sentiment.

I wonder if our near-daily exposure to images of people in hospital ICUs and body bags will help to change our attitude towards death for good. I have no doubt children have been asking more questions about death in the past 18+ months than they had been before, which has forced parents and teachers to find ways to answer them. If we as a society stopped treating death and dying as a taboo topic, we might, perhaps, stop being so cavalier about taking unnecessary risks with our safety and health in the name of "freedom".