In the United States and around the world, COVID‐19 represents a mass fatality incident, as there are more bodies than can be handled using existing resources. Although the management and disposition of bodies is distressing and heartrending, it is a task that local, state, and federal governments must plan for and respond to collaboratively with the private sector and faith‐based community. When mass fatalities are mismanaged, there are grave emotional and mental health consequences that can delay recovery and undermine community resilience. Using insights from one author's mass fatality management research during the 2010 Haiti earthquake, this Viewpoint essay explores how mass fatalities are being managed in response to COVID‐19. Based on the researcher's findings a decade ago, it is apparent that many lessons have not been learned. The essay concludes by providing governments with practical lessons on how to manage mass fatalities to facilitate and promote community resilience.

The COVID-19 pandemic, which is still gripping the world, brought death front and center into many people’s lives. In the United States, however, some of the deaths were treated as “more tragic” than others given someone’s economic use value coupled with dehumanizing language. Using Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, this is understood as a public values failure when economic productivity eclipses public health and humanity. Introducing a conceptual framework, this article explores this death narrative and implores public administrators to think about death management in a humane framing.

PurposeThe purpose of this viewpoint essay is to examine deathcare leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and recommend innovations to employ a more human-centric approach.Design/methodology/approachThis viewpoint essay uses scholarly and popular literature to explore deathcare practices during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and to identify limitations of existing mass fatality management policies.FindingsDeathcare leadership in the USA lacks a human-centric approach. Rationalistic mass fatality management during COVID-19 left families struggling with grief and mourning because many burial rituals could not take place. This essay suggests a humanistic approach to death management through leadership innovations as a remedy to this problem. Such leadership innovations can improve responses to deathcare during this ongoing pandemic and future public health emergencies.Originality/valueThis essay offers practical improvements to make deathcare more human-centric.

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