Texas Artist Plants Sea of Flags in Yard to Honor COVID-19 Victims as State's Death Toll Passes 15,000

3 年前

An artist has created a display of plastic flags in his front yard in Austin, Texas, to honor victims of the coronavirus pandemic.

Shane Reilly started the display back in May, when the state’s death toll was under 1,000, the New York Times reported. Each flag represents one death from COVID-19 in Texas.

Reilly told the New York Times that he started paying close attention to the coronavirus pandemic early on, as his son is immunocompromised.

“We live on a corner, so I see people walking by every day and I would notice that they just weren’t wearing masks, and I thought, something’s not hitting home with them. These are real people dying, real Texans dying, and I’ve got a kid in quarantine here at home and people are acting like this is almost a vacation,” he said. “So I thought, what could I put out there that would wake people up and make them say, ‘Oh, this is real, this is something we should pay attention to’?”

Texas recorded 15,229 deaths from COVID-19 as of September 23, as the US passed 201,000 deaths in total. Credit: Shane Reilly via Storyful