The sad story of coronavirus is playing out on social media.

A few weeks ago we saw a surge in news posts about the virus and then a flurry of articles about positive tests.

And now we are seeing the obituaries.

My feed, a random collection of 1,600 handles mostly focused on media and finance, is being filled with posts on the passing of celebrities, neighbors and colleagues.

The flow of posts is as sudden as it is sad.

To try and visualize the trajectory I analyzed Twitter posts on Bloomberg tagged as obituaries related to the virus.

It’s a small sample set from the overall flow of 500 million daily Tweets, but the trend is directional and representative.

There is some data emerging that the growth of the virus may have slowed or death rates may be skewed by the randomness of testing.

Let’s hope that is the case.

What the social posts do is put names and stories to the many people who have been devastated by the spread of Covid-19.