More than 500,000 Americans die from Covid. More than 500,000 lives cut short by a pandemic will never be forgotten by the rest of us. Journalists team up for words and illustrations and images to fit the scope of the moment.
As the NPR’s Pien Huang wrote on Monday: Half a million people lost to this disease was unthinkable when the first few people died of COVID-19 in the USA in February last year. ‘
Huang has dr. Camara Phyllis Jones, a former president of the American Public Health Association, was quoted as saying that ‘the large number and loss of people from our society is not recognized. We can not think that these people are disposable and dispensable and that we can only get along very well without them. These are the kind of blinders that devour the power of the whole society. “
President Biden and his government did their best to acknowledge the loss Monday night with a tribute and a silent silence at the White House. The broadcast networks carried it out directly with the major cable news networks. Several of the broadcasts showed faces of the victims and personified the unfathomable loss.
“Please do not look away from this or be stunned by the pandemic,” said CNN’s Lisa Respers France, a daily contributor to this newsletter,
tweeted Monday. Lisa’s father passed away last week. She wrote: “My father and my uncle are included in this number and it is a pain for me that I do not wish for. Death is always painful, but it is upsetting when you know it does not have to be. “
You are not alone.
CNN’s Brianna Keilar “broke into the air” as she shared “tragic clips of those who lost family members to Covid-19 – and urged viewers to remember the lives, even if they were ‘exhausted’ and ‘tired ‘of the pandemic,’ Leia Idliby of Mediaite wrote.
“I know it’s hard. I hear it from so many of you,” Keilar said. “I know you’re tired. I know you’ve been drained. It’s been over a year since the first case of the coronavirus. The quarantine, the hope that it would disappear just to realize it would not happen any time soon. , the struggle to get by, the worry that if you can catch a fever or start coughing during the day, juggling your work while teaching your children at home, afraid to see your grandparents, afraid to see your grandchildren, knowing that there is a vaccine that you and your loved ones cannot yet get, that is struggling with mental health.And for the past year, nearly 500,000 Americans have lost their lives.It is a collective loss.We are taking this moment to acknowledge it.You are not alone.And if you are lucky enough to have some more fuel in your tank today, this is a good day to remind someone in your life that you are there for them. ‘
Faith, reflection, healing
CNN aired ‘We Remember 500,000: A National Covid-19 Memorial Service’ on Monday. I asked host Jake Tapper how the special hour-long program came about. “Last spring, given the government’s refusal to acknowledge the great loss our country is suffering, a good friend of mine suggested that CNN fill the gap,” Tapper replied. “It was for 100,000 deaths of Covid in the US.” (The show aired on Sunday, May 31.)
“Tragically, we are at another gruesome and heartbreaking milestone, 500,000. So it made even more sense to take a moment to honor the loss, and perhaps find a community and perhaps even greater meaning in faith and reflection, “Tapper said. “I am, as always, grateful to work at a news network and for a boss who allows such moments.”
We will never know the total death toll
On Monday at the Covid Response Team briefing, a reporter expressed the fact that “some officials and health experts have said we are almost signing COVID-19 deaths in this country.” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky confirmed: “I think that when history writes this, we will understand for several reasons that the mortality rate from this pandemic is far greater than the numbers we have counted.”
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