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Biden
mourns
500,000
dead,
balancing
nation's
grief
and hope
By
JONATHAN
LEMIRE
and
JOSH
BOAK
apnews.com
WASHINGTON
- With
sunset
remarks
and a
national
moment
of
silence,
President
Joe
Biden on
Monday
confronted
head-on
the
country’s
once-unimaginable
loss —
half a
million
Americans
in the
COVID-19
pandemic
— as he
tried to
strike a
balance
between
mourning
and
hope.
Addressing
the
“grim,
heartbreaking
milestone”
directly
and
publicly,
Biden
stepped
to a
lectern
in the
White
House
Cross
Hall,
unhooked
his face
mask and
delivered
an
emotion-filled
eulogy
for more
than
500,000
Americans
he said
he felt
he knew.
“We
often
hear
people
described
as
ordinary
Americans.
There’s
no such
thing,”
he said
Monday
evening.
“There’s
nothing
ordinary
about
them.
The
people
we lost
were
extraordinary.”
“Just
like
that,”
he
added,
“so many
of them
took
their
last
breath
alone.”
A
president
whose
own life
has been
marked
by
family
tragedy,
Biden
spoke in
deeply
personal
terms,
referencing
his own
losses
as he
tried to
comfort
the huge
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
addressed
grief
more
powerfully
than
perhaps
any
other
American
public
figure.
“I know
what
it’s
like
when you
are
there,
holding
their
hands,
as they
look in
your eye
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
baby
daughter
in a car
collision
and
later an
adult
son to
brain
cancer,
leavened
the
grief
with a
message
of hope.
“This
nation
will
smile
again.
This
nation
will
know
sunny
days
again.
This
nation
will
know joy
again.
And as
we do,
we’ll
remember
each
person
we’ve
lost,
the
lives
they
lived,
the
loved
ones
they
left
behind.”
He
said,
“We have
to
resist
becoming
numb to
the
sorrow.
We have
to
resist
viewing
each
life as
a
statistic
or a
blur or,
on the
news. We
must do
so to
honor
the
dead.
But,
equally
important,
to care
for the
living.”
The
president
ordered
flags on
federal
property
lowered
to half
staff
for five
days and
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
bleak
threshold
of
500,000
deaths
was
playing
out
against
contradictory
crosscurrents:
an
encouraging
drop in
coronavirus
cases
and
worries
about
the
spread
of more
contagious
variants.
Biden’s
management
of the
pandemic
will
surely
define
at least
the
first
year of
his
presidency,
and his
response
has
showcased
the
inherent
tension
between
preparing
the
nation
for dark
weeks
ahead
while
also
offering
optimism
about
pushing
out
vaccines
that
could,
eventually,
bring
this
American
tragedy
to a
close.
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
for a
moment
of
silence
at
sundown.
Black
bunting
draped
the
doorway
they
walked
through.
Five
hundred
brilliantly
lit
candles
— each
standing
for
1,000
people
lost —
illuminated
the
stairways
on
either
side of
them as
the
Marine
Band
played a
mournful
rendition
of
“Amazing
Grace.”
The
milestone
comes
just
over a
year
after
the
first
confirmed
U.S.
fatality
from the
coronavirus.
The
pandemic
has
since
swept
across
the
world
and the
U.S.,
stressing
the
nation’s
health
care
system,
rattling
its
economy
and
rewriting
the
rules of
everyday
society.
In
one of
his many
symbolic
breaks
with his
predecessor,
Biden
has not
shied
away
from
offering
remembrances
for the
lives
lost to
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
somber
moment
on the
eve of
Biden’s
inauguration
—
typically
a
celebratory
time
when
America
marks
the
democratic
tradition
of a
peaceful
transfer
of power
— was a
measure
of the
enormity
of loss
for the
nation.
The
COVID-19
death
total in
the
United
States
had just
crossed
400,000
when
Biden
took the
oath of
office.
An
additional
100,000
have
died in
the past
month.
Former
President
Donald
Trump
invariably
looked
to play
down the
total,
initially
claiming
the
virus
would go
away on
its own
and
later
locking
into a
prediction
that
America
would
suffer
far
fewer
than
100,000
deaths.
Once the
total
eclipsed
that
mark,
Trump
shifted
gears
again
and said
that
scale of
loss was
actually
a
success
story
because
it could
have
been
much
worse.
Outside
of
perfunctory
tweets
marking
the
milestones
of
100,000
and
200,000
deaths,
Trump
oversaw
no
moment
of
national
mourning,
no
memorial
service.
At the
Republican
National
Convention,
he made
no
mention
of the
suffering,
leaving
that to
first
lady
Melania
Trump.
And
at
campaign
rallies
across
the
nation,
he
erroneously
predicted
that the
nation
was
“rounding
the
corner”
on the
virus
while he
disregarded
safety
measures
such as
masks
and
pushed
governors
to lift
restrictions
against
public
health
advice.
In audio
tapes
released
last
fall, it
was
revealed
that
Trump
told
journalist
Bob
Woodward
in March
that “I
wanted
to
always
play it
down. I
still
like
playing
it down
because
I don’t
want to
create a
panic.”
Biden,
by
contrast,
has long
drawn on
his own
personal
tragedy
as he
comforts
those
who
grieve.
He has
pledged
to level
with the
American
public
on the
severity
of the
crisis
and has
repeatedly
warned
that the
nation
was
going
through
a “very
dark
winter,”
one now
challenged
by the
arrival
of more
contagious
virus
variants.
Biden
also has
deliberately
set
expectations
low —
particularly
on
vaccinations
and when
the
nation
can
return
to
normal —
knowing
he could
land a
political
win by
exceeding
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
far more
ambitious
goal.
The
administration
says it
expects
to have
enough
vaccine
available
for
every
American
by the
end of
July.
Biden’s
reference
to next
Christmas
for a
possible
return
to
normalcy
raised
eyebrows
across a
pandemic-weary
nation
and
seemed
less
optimistic
than
projections
made by
others
in his
own
administration,
including
Dr.
Anthony
Fauci,
who has
suggested
a summer
comeback.
___
Lemire
reported
from New
York.
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