After decades of police work, the idea of retiring started sounding good to Craig Long when COVID-19 struck suburban Suffern, New York, in March 2020. He was in his early 60s. As a veteran detective, Long was assigned in the pandemic’s early days to help investigate the deaths of people who had died at home from the fast-spreading COVID-19. Many were about his age. “I was just going from death to death to death to death,” Long said. Sometimes he was at a home for hours as paramedics debated what to do with the body, given the uncertainty at that time over how the disease spread. Like many olde…