Workers wearing protective equipment bury bodies in a temporary mass grave on Hart Island, NY.
Sometime on April 10, 2020 (according to the John Hopkins data), the number of deaths due to COVID-19 in the U.S. ticked past 16,899, exceeding the number of Vietnam war deaths in 1968, the worst year for U.S. casualties in that miserable conflict. A scant 3 weeks later, as I am writing this diary, COVID-19 deaths surpassed the grimmer figure of 58,220, the death toll for the entire Vietnam war, a war that cost Lyndon Johnson his Presidency (and should have cost Richard Nixon his), a war so divisive that even the memorial to its dead was controversial. News outlets are starting to headline this milestone, but I suspect it will rapidly fade from view as the virus continues its inexorable march to still more horrific tallies. But seriously, more deaths than Viet-freaking-Nam? In 3 months?? Doesn’t that call for a National Day of Mourning or something? Or how about we ring the bell 58 times, once every 2 seconds; each ring signifying 1,000 COVID victims (come to think of it, that might be a nice way to start those idiotic briefings).
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