In his first prime-time address as president Thursday evening, Joe Biden pulled from his breast pocket a card with the tally of American deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic.
He read the numbers with emphasis: 527,726.
The tally, updated daily, is always with him, a reminder of the devastating toll the pandemic continues to take on America.
The virus has enacted “a loss of living,” Biden said, acknowledging how we’ve all sacrificed relationships and milestones, and many of us, jobs, too.
That he takes the pandemic so personally is reassuring and in stark contrast to former President Donald Trump’s denial of what has become the greatest public health crisis in a century.
That tone-deaf attitude has contributed to a callous response to the pandemic’s death toll. Here in Allen County, we have lost 16 lives thus far. Had those deaths been the result of traffic accidents or drug overdoses, we’d likely be up in arms. Yet we still exhibit a fatalistic attitude toward the pandemic’s death toll, so desperate are we for a return to normal.
Kansas’ death rate due to the virus is 165 per 100,000, a total of almost 5,000 deaths, which puts us in the top half of the nation along with the much more heavily populated states.
That the virus quickly became so politicized has been the greatest threat to our chances of overcoming it. Today, more than one-third of Republicans say they don’t intend to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top virus expert, has said that Trump’s silence about getting the vaccine himself was “a lost opportunity,” a chance for silent leadership.
BIDEN was strongest Thursday evening when he leaned into the microphone and humbly said, “I need you, I need every American, to do their part,” working together to ensure that the pandemic does not take another turn for the worse.
To do that, Biden said, “I need you to get vaccinated when it’s your turn…. And to help your family, your friends, your neighbors get vaccinated as well.”
Biden is the president we need because he tells it like it is regarding the virus. “You’re owed nothing less than the truth,” he said.
Biden set the goal of July 4 for a return to some semblance of normal, celebrating our rediscovered freedom at the same time we celebrate the freedoms of our country.
It’s circled on my calendar.
