WASHINGTON (AP) –
With sunset remarks and a national moment of silence, President Joe Biden on Monday confronted the country’s once-unimaginable loss – half a million Americans in the COVID-19 pandemic – as he tried to balance grief and hope.
Directly and publicly targeting the “grim, heartbreaking milestone,” Biden stepped to a lectern in the Cross Hall of the White House, unhooked his face mask, and delivered an emotion-filled eulogy to more than 500,000 Americans he said he knew.
“We often hear people described as ordinary Americans. There is no such thing, ”he said Monday evening. ‘They have nothing ordinary. The people we lost were extraordinary. “
“Exactly,” he added, “so many of them just took their last breaths.”
Biden, a president whose life has been scarred by family tragedy, spoke in very personal terms, referring to his own losses as he sought to console the vast number of Americans whose lives have been forever changed by the pandemic.
‘I know all too well. I know what it’s like to not be there when it happens, ”said Biden, who has long dealt with grief more vigorously than perhaps any other American public figure. “I know what it is like when you are there holding their hands as they look into your eyes and they slip away. That black hole in your chest, you feel like you’re being sucked into it. “
The president, who lost his first wife and daughter in a car accident and later an adult son to brain cancer, imbued the grief with a message of hope.
This nation will smile again. This nation will have sunny days again. This nation will have joy again. And as we do that, we’ll remember every person we’ve lost, the lives they’ve lived, the loved ones they’ve left behind. “
He said, “We have to resist becoming numb to the grief. We have to resist seeing every life as a statistic or a blur or, on the news. We must do this to honor the dead. But, just as important, to take care of the living. “
The president ordered flags on federal property lowered to half the staff for five days, then led the moment of communal mourning for those lost to a virus that often prevents people from gathering to remember their loved ones. Monday’s gloomy threshold of 500,000 deaths unfolded contradictory crosscurrents: an encouraging decline in coronavirus cases and concerns about the spread of more contagious variants.
Biden’s management of the pandemic will certainly determine the first year of his presidency, and his response has demonstrated the inherent tension between preparing the nation for the dark weeks ahead while offering optimism about vaccine pushing. that could eventually end this American tragedy.
After he spoke, the President, along with First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, stood outside the White House at sunset for a moment of silence. Black streamers draped the doorway they passed through. Five hundred beautifully lit candles – each for 1,000 lost people – lit the steps on either side of it as the Marine Band played a mournful rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’.
The milestone comes just over a year after the first confirmed U.S. fatal accident from the coronavirus. The pandemic has since spread around the world and in the US, straining the country’s health care system, shaking up the economy and rewriting the rules of everyday society.
In one of his many symbolic breaks with his predecessor, Biden did not shy away from bringing memories of the lives lost by the virus. His first stop after arriving in Washington on the eve of his inauguration was to attend a twilight ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to mourn the dead.
That gloomy moment on the eve of Biden’s inauguration – typically a festive time when America marks the democratic tradition of a peaceful transfer of power – was a measure of the enormity of the loss to the nation.
The COVID-19 death rate in the United States had risen just above 400,000 when Biden took the oath of office. Another 100,000 have died in the past month.
Former President Donald Trump invariably tried to downplay the total, initially claiming the virus would go away on its own and later determined to predict that America would suffer far fewer than 100,000 deaths. When the total eclipsed that figure, Trump shifted up a gear, saying the magnitude of the loss was actually a success story because it could have been much worse.
Aside from perfunctory tweets marking the milestones of 100,000 and 200,000 deaths, Trump did not oversee a moment of national mourning, not a memorial service. At the Republican National Convention, he made no mention of the suffering and left it to first lady Melania Trump.
And at campaign rallies across the country, he falsely predicted that the country was “turning the corner” with the virus, while ignoring security measures like masks and pushing governors to lift restrictions on public health advice. In tapes released last fall, it was revealed that Trump told journalist Bob Woodward in March, “I always wanted to play it. I still like playing it out because I don’t want to cause a panic. “
Biden, on the other hand, has long drawn on his own personal tragedy while comforting those who mourn. He has pledged to be on a par with the American public on the severity of the crisis and has repeatedly warned that the nation was experiencing a “very dark winter” now challenged by the advent of more contagious virus variants.
Biden has also deliberately set low expectations – especially when it comes to vaccinations and when the nation can return to normal – knowing he could achieve a political victory by surpassing them. He is on track to far exceed his initial promise to deliver 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days, with some public health experts now urging him to set a much more ambitious goal. The government says it will have enough vaccine available for every American by the end of July.
Biden’s reference to next Christmas for a possible return to normal life raised eyebrows about a pandemic weary nation and seemed less optimistic than projections from others in his own government, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has proposed a summer comeback.
Lemire reported from New York.