The evidence of a new, sad milestone in this pandemic can be found in many places (not only) in the United States. Since Monday, the American flags have been waving at half-mast at public buildings, military bases and US missions abroad as a sign of mourning for five days. And now the new man in the White House has also thought of the more than 500,000 deaths from Covid-19 in the United States.
US President Joe Biden warned against dulling society in view of the high number. “Even if we have fought against this pandemic for so long, we must fight against becoming deaf to the suffering,” said Biden in a speech in the White House on Monday evening (local time). 500 candles lined the steps of the US power center.
“Today we mark a really grim, harrowing milestone – 500,071 dead. That’s more Americans who died from this pandemic in a year than in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War combined, ”he said.
Biden called on Americans to keep wearing masks, adhere to distance rules and get vaccinated when it is their turn. “We must end the politics of misinformation that has divided families, communities and the country. It has already cost too many lives, ”he said, referring to the term of office of his predecessor Donald Trump.
The United States has a disproportionate number of deaths, accounting for 19 percent of the world’s coronavirus deaths, as the country makes up just four percent of the world’s population.
The first infection in the US was confirmed on January 21, 2020. According to current knowledge, the first deaths in connection with an illness occurred almost exactly one year ago in February 2020.
By May there were already 100,000 dead. By September the number doubled. In December the threshold of 300,000 was reached. 46 percent of all corona deaths were confirmed from December to February of this year, even though the vaccination campaign has now started. In 2020, the average expected lifetime in the USA fell by a full year. This is the sharpest decline since World War II.
Biden: “This country will laugh again”
After the speech, the President, at the side of his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris and her husband Douglas Emhoff, honored the victims with a minute’s silence.
The bells of the National Cathedral in Washington later struck 500 times.
Even if the occasion was sad, the new US president tried to be optimistic: »This country will laugh again, this country will have sunny days again. This country will have joy again, ”he said. “We’ll remember every person we’ve lost, the lives they had, and the loved ones they left behind,” Biden said.
The number of new infections in the USA is actually falling significantly and an average of 1.7 million people are vaccinated every day.
In addition to Biden, probably the most prominent virologist in the United States also spoke up. Anthony Fauci, a White House advisor under both Trump and Biden, sees the country’s political division as an important factor in the “shocking” death toll from the virus. When it arrived in the USA, this split was once again noticeable. Even wearing protective masks has been made a political and not a medical issue, he told Reuters.
Fauci speaks of a “lack of participation” in the White House
“Even under the best of conditions, that would have been a significant problem,” says Fauci, referring to the risk of infection from Covid-19: “But that doesn’t explain how a rich and highly developed nation (…) can become the hardest hit country on earth . «In 100 years, nothing comparably bad had happened to the country in the health sector. In decades to come, people would “remember the terrible year 2020 and maybe 2021,” Fauci said.
Donald Trump (left) and Anthony Fauci (in March 2020)
Photo: ALEXANDER DRAGO / REUTERS
If the fight against the virus had failed, “the lack of participation in the top management of the country” would not have helped either. Fauci and then President Trump had repeatedly clashed – with the attacks originating from Trump. He had repeatedly exposed his own virus expert in public.
According to his own account, however, Fauci reached his personal low when he discovered that numerous cities and states had simply ignored his commission’s recommendations for a safe reopening after a lockdown. That was “unimaginable for me, when they can see with their own eyes what is happening.”
