One Year
It was only last September that we suffered the 200,000 deaths mark from COVID. It only took seven months to reach 200,000. We are now a full twelve months into the pandemic, and this week, 500,000, half-a-million Americans, have died from the disease.
Last September the loss was seemingly ignored. As we honored the 19th Anniversary of 9-11, the loss of 2,977 Americans, we slipped by the milestone of 200,000. This week, we are doing much the same, letting the horror of one year’s loss to COVID slip by.
Last night President Biden held a brief ceremony at the White House honoring our loss. Five hundred candles, each candle representing a thousand lost, were arranged on the steps to the White House portico. That location is best remembered for Donald Trump’s triumphant return from the Bethesda Hospital and his own struggle with COVID. The candle light ceremony was at least some acknowledgement of the personal loss that most Americans feel.
In September, I proposed we honor the 200,000 with a moment of silence along with the 9-11 ceremonies. We didn’t. Here’s what I said then.
Historic Loss
Deaths matter. Over 100,000 American soldiers have died in battle since the end of World War II. Over 100,000 American soldiers died in World War I. In only two wars in United States history have more than 100,000 been killed: the Civil War and World War II.
We honor all of those deaths every year on Memorial Day. We respect those that we have lost, and we expect that our leaders will be more than careful about putting our current soldiers in harms way. They are our children, our parents, our brothers and sisters and our friends. Their lives are important.
Sometime in the next couple of weeks, the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic will reach 200,000 American lives. More Americans have died from COVID than died in every battle and war in the past seventy-five years since World War II. More than Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, Iraq and all the rest combined. They died in only eight months. And, if it were a world contest, then the United States is “the big loser” in deaths. We’re approaching 190,000 this week. Brazil is in second with 121,000, and India in third with 65,000. Even though no one believes that China and Russia’s numbers are accurate, this is NOT a statistics where having “the most” is a good thing.
Politics and Life
Unfortunately for America, COVID-19, like much else in American life, is cloaked in politics. The US response to COVID is the crucial issue of the 2020 Presidential election. If you’re for Donald Trump, then China “gave” us the virus, and we responded as well as we could. Now we should just get back to living our “regular” lives, be sad for the losses, and learn to deal with the virus and wait for “herd immunity” or a vaccine.
If you’re for Joe Biden, then the virus might well have been controlled from the outset. The US might have responded in a way to restrict the infection rate. Perhaps many of those two hundred thousand would be alive, and the US would be on the way to recovery like many of the European countries are today. Biden would have us re-group, gain control of the disease, and then move forward.
The Calculus
Frankly both sides are vested in what happens to COVID. The President is doing everything he can to convince America it’s all “OK”. He’s reducing testing (so we don’t see increases) and claiming a miracle cure (that the FDA had to walk back in the next couple of days). And this week the CDC released a report saying that people who are already weakened die from COVID (duh).
(On that report, it’s important to remember that people who get COVID often die from something else – pneumonia primarily – and that is listed as a “cause of death” along with COVID. But without COVID there wouldn’t have been pneumonia, and the patient would be alive).
I don’t believe that the Biden side wants more deaths to continue to prove Trump’s incompetence. They are calling for a more logical approach, a proven scientific method of controlling an epidemic virus. Yes, it works into their political calculus as well. Aren’t they lucky?
Mourning the Dead
And while COVID is a critical issue, it isn’t the only one. We as a nation are focused on whether Black lives are valued, and how to keep order in our streets. Our divisions are so real that there are literal fights occurring between protestors and pickup truck drivers in Portland (full disclosure, I own a pickup truck too). So, I hope both sides are worried about the state of our nation, so rancorous and divided.
On September 11th, there’s going to be the usual moments. We will all be preparing for 9-11 remembrances, minutes of silence at times that planes struck, solemn bells rung at Ground Zero, flowers laid at the Monument in Shanksville, Pennsylvania and the Memorial at the Pentagon. We will mourn the loss of the firemen, and the policemen, and the regular people working in the Towers and the Pentagon, or flying on the planes. 2,997 died that day, and we will rightfully observe the loss.
As Abraham Lincoln said about such ceremonies, “it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this”. But while we are preparing for the nineteenth anniversary of 9-11, we should be mindful of the current milestone we will be reaching. Somewhere around that date, the two hundred thousandth person will die from COVID-19 in the United States.
#Honor200000
Whether you are a Republican or Democrat, a Trumper, Never-Trumper, Biden fan or something else, we should all pause to recognize the loss WE as a nation, have had in our own lives in the past eight months. We will pause at 8:46 and 9:03. And we should pause again at 9:37 and 10:03. Those deserved moments are the times when planes crashed into the buildings or courageous passengers flew one into the ground.
But perhaps at noon on September 11th, we should pause one more time, for those we’ve lost in this ongoing American tragedy. It’s not about politics. It’s to recognize our ongoing sacrifice, and our continuing grief.
