Dan Flynn is a St. Louis area Funeral Director. He is also a Subject Matter Expert in Mass Fatalities for the Department of Homeland Security, a Consultant in Emergency Management and a member of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services’ Disaster Mortuary Response Team. During the height of COVID-19 pandemic, Dan was assigned to staff the Federal Quarantine Center outside Atlanta, GA, then the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, at a time when the city was experiencing up to 1,200 COVID deaths per day. A year later, he was sent to assist at the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Los Angeles County.
Dan has spend the last two decades surrounded by death, on a massive scale. For years, he has spoken against the level at which the religious right permeates the way in which our society treats the dead and the families of the deceased. He has witnessed that most people, in response to tornados, hurricanes and pandemics have been programmed to “send payers” rather than face reality and actually do something that would help the situation. Dan is a nationally know speaker and author, dedicated to the idea that organized religion has pressed its dogma so far into the fabric of our society that we have forgotten how to respond to our fellow human beings’ when in need, for even the most basic of human needs.