From Dorian de Wind at The Moderate Voice:
This Memorial Day is probably unlike any other Memorial Day we have ever observed.
Of course, as every other Memorial Day, “It Is All About Honoring and Remembering” the men and women who have given it all for our country, for us, in military service – and we do.
But on a day when the coronavirus death toll in our nation quickly and inexorably approaches the grim milestone of 100,000, when our country has lost more lives to the virus than to six of our wars as well as to 9/11 combined, we cannot let it pass without also mourning and honoring those whose lives have been cut short by the virus.
The New York Times, in an unprecedented move to convey the enormity of the tragedy – and to personalize it — has dedicated the entire front page and three additional inside pages to list the names of 1,000 victims of the virus (just 1 percent of the toll) along with a short “tribute” depicting “the uniqueness of each life lost.”
Below the stark headline “US deaths near 100,000, an incalculable loss”, is the sub-heading that reads: “They were not simply names on a list. They were us.”
The Times further expands, “Numbers alone cannot possibly measure the impact of the coronavirus on America, whether it is the number of patients treated, jobs interrupted, or lives cut short.”