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WASHINGTON. The flag over the White House flew at half mast in the cold winter air, and hundreds of candles on the south side of the building commemorated deaths by corona in the United States. President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill, Vice President Kamala Harris, and her husband Douglas Emhoff bowed. Head bowed, they were silent for a minute, hands clasped as if in prayer. Soon after, a military band played the song “Amazing Grace”.
“Today we marked a truly courageous and heartbreaking milestone,” Biden said. According to data from Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the US exceeded the threshold of more than 500,000 deaths from corona. “More Americans died in one year of the pandemic than in World War I, World War II and the Vietnam War combined. More lives were taken by the virus than any other country in the world.”
Flags at half mast
However, the president warned Americans not to be blunted by the “unimaginable” number of victims. “We have to fight against becoming deaf to suffering. We have to fight against seeing each life as a statistic.” To commemorate the dead, Biden ordered the flags to be lowered to half-staff across the country. This applies to five days in public buildings, military bases and diplomatic missions abroad.
The winter months of the pandemic were devastating in the United States. Since the beginning of January alone, more than 150,000 people have died after being infected with the virus, with 28.2 million confirmed infections. But America wouldn’t be America if it weren’t for the hope of better times. In recent weeks, the number of new infections has dropped significantly. Meanwhile, an average of around 77,000 new cases are reported per day; At the height of the crisis in January, the seven-day average was 250,000 new infections per day.
At the same time, the government’s vaccination program is progressing apace. Biden had promised 100 million vaccines in the first 100 days of his term; I could get over it. So far, 63 million vaccines have been administered and a good 13 percent of the population has received at least one dose of Pfizer / Biontech or Moderna. Currently about 1.8 million vaccines are administered every day. The number could soon rise to three million vaccines a day. In the next six weeks alone, an additional 145 million cans will be delivered.
