Memorializing "Virtual Nobodies"

We have now passed a terrible milestone in the US: the official count of 200,000 COVID-19 deaths, which I think can not be memorialized properly without also acknowledging that COVID-19 deaths are preventable. We have the information, and have had the information for some time, that the virus is airborne, which strongly indicates that people should wear masks and socially distance. The current president of the US maintains that everyone knew in February, when he was taped by Bob Woodward warning that the virus was airborne, that this was the case.

Even now, we're only quibbling about how far apart people should be to avoid the spread.

Trump admitted on tape in March that he was purposefully playing down news of the virus, and that he was aware that even children could be susceptible. White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany, perhaps unaware that everyone knows she's lying, and that anyway, she's supposed to be working for the White House, not the Trump campaign, says he never plays the virus down and even goes so far as to say he tells the truth. She uses a maximal hypothetical number of 2 million people*, an absurd figure that no one would have predicted for the US by September 2020, as being the number our current death toll should be compared to, instead of the actual death toll of other nations happening right now in the real, not hypothetical world in which we happen to live.

And why does she lie so outstandingly? Because she is hewing to Trump's own "moving goalposts" method of escaping blame. And she's trying to cover for the heinousness of something Trump said recently, like a teen store manager trying to pave over a corporate screw-up:



Trump said "virtually nobody" is affected by COVID-19.  Your 200,000 deceased loves, your family members, your friends, your coworkers--who were they to him?  Your long-haulers, with weeks dragging into months of lingering symptoms--how affected are you, really? You, with your businesses permanently closed, not because of mass shutdown orders peremptorily delivered, but because of fear and shortage of demand for your services in a changed world. You, the asymptomatic carrier who knows you may have caused illness in a loved one, or worse. You, ghosts, the "excess deaths" of COVID-19 deaths uncounted and recorded as strokes, heart attacks or aneurisms, or who were so epidemic-adjacent you passed from some other cause but feared approaching the health care system for treatment because things might be worse.  Virtually nobody.

You health care workers, you essential workers, you police, fire fighters and EMTS--he just told you how you were so virtually unaffected, and were not scared for yourself or your family. He told you you lost virtually nobody when you know co-workers that have passed. You parents, and the trials of balancing a new work/school/child care balance, your fears for your children and aged parents and grandparents--this was nothing at all, virtually nothing. Your knowledge that elderly relatives died alone or receded into themselves because they needed interactions that could not be made.

This pandemic has not been virtual, and the deaths are truly real. The privations and damage and stress and pain have been real, and there will be after-effects and still more pain to come. And all we needed was the truth, and what we got and still get is public relations, and news of cronyism and grifting and skim.

This Administration fucked up, and can't even admit even now that 200,000 dead Americans is a tragedy, not a statistic, because every death is a unique, human story. They all were lives with meaning. And you deserve someone who can mourn with you, as well as level with you, and will lift us up to do more, better, and more effectively than this liar in chief, who can't even acknowledge them.

*Which seems to be a low-ball herd immunity number. But look, there are crazies who wished that we had a full-infection at once rate as if that would be a good thing. The attitude that people are so dispensable is appalling.