On Tuesday morning, the United States officially passed 100,000 deaths from COVID-19.
It’s very easy to complain about The New York Times. Especially so when they’re going to extraordinary pains to avoid pointing out Donald Trump’s lies, or bending logic into pretzels to generate bothsidesism, or when devoting every single column of the front page to the possibility that there might be more unknown Hillary Clinton emails (spoiler: there were not). But every now and then, the Grey Lady remembers that it is The New York Times, dammit. And this weekend was one of those.
That weekend front page, and four interior pages, were devoted to the names and barest bone details of just 1% of those who have died. The website also has a similar honor to those who have fallen. As the introduction heartbreakingly says, “they were us.” Compare that reality … to this Memorial day prediction from Mike Pence.
Mike Pence said the coronavirus pandemic could be over by Memorial Day. If that’s not incredible enough, Pence didn’t say that in January, when the virus was still poorly understood, or in early February when, thanks to a lack of testing, no one understood the true extent of the outbreak already beginning in the United States. Nope.
As Bloomberg reported, Mike Pence said this just one month ago, on April 24. “I think honestly, if you look at the trends today,” Pence told listeners to Geraldo Rivera’s radio show, “that I think by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us.”
In case you’re wondering, that was right after the United States had passed 50,000 deaths.