We've reached nine-hundred thousand souls, lost to covid-19 in the United States. More every minute. The most recent number on the Johns Hopkins dashboard is nine hundred and two thousand, four hundred seventy-eight souls, nearly one-sixth of the global toll of five million, seven hundred and thirty-seven thousand, six hundred and fifty-three souls. Woe.
In a statement yesterday, President Biden mourned, too.
Today, our nation marks another tragic milestone — 900,000 American lives have been lost to COVID-19. They were beloved mothers and fathers, grandparents, children, brothers and sisters, neighbors, and friends. Each soul is irreplaceable. We pray for the loved ones they have left behind, and together we keep every family enduring this pain in our hearts.
This is welcome - so much better than his life and death-denying predecessor would have done - but still seemed to me somehow insufficient. (Not that anything could be sufficient!) I realized what was getting to me: the near-exclusive focus on biological family as the locus of "American lives." "Friends" comes after "neighbors," like the outer fringe of moral concern rather than a centerpiece of full lives. Even stranger, "partners" (or at least "wives" and "husbands") don't appear at all. Nor do "fellow citizens." Is it a good or a bad thing that, even in a moment of public mourning, identity is imagined as private?
