by Nick Taylor

 

Nearly 100,000 COVID-19 deaths and the U.S. has now lowered its flags for Memorial Day.  The White House says that this year, dropping the flag also honors the pandemic victims 

We called for this action a month ago, when the death toll was almost 50,000.  Memorial Day is when we remember America’s war dead, but we also lower the flag at times of national tragedy. We are a nation in mourning. In normal years,  for many, Memorial Day is about personal mourning. My friend Gerry Chambers and others I know spend the days this weekend decorating the graves of their loved ones. And now we have the horrific personal loss for 100,000 families. Their losses are ours.

The New York Times devoted its front page on the eve of Memorial Day to the names of COVID-19 victims. That wasn’t enough space. The story jumped and filled two inside pages, too.

The tradition of lowering the flag to half-staff is codified. USA.gov says, “The United States flag flies at half-staff (or half-mast) when the nation or a state is in mourning. The president, through a presidential proclamation, a state governor, or the mayor of the District of Columbia can order flags to fly at half-staff. Most often, this is done to mark the death of a government official, military member, or first responder; in honor of Memorial Day or other national day of remembrance; or following a national tragedy.”

Let us grieve for those who have died, and let us show our concern for the health care and other essential workers who put themselves in danger every day.  And let us pray that the federal administration’s chaotic, uncoordinated, failed response to this contagion gives way to actual leadership that so far as been pitifully lacking. 

 There’s no end in sight for the tragedy we are experiencing. The death count continues as real people, our loved ones, die. In four months we have gone beyond the 58,000 American deaths in eleven years of the Vietnam War. Soon we  will have doubled the 53,000 Americans who died in two years in World War II. 

Mr. Trump tells us he’s a wartime president.  He first floated the notion on March 18, when he tweeted that “we are at war with an invisible enemy.

But no effective national war is being fought against this virus. That President Trump has failed to take the battle to the enemy is clear.  His battle plan consists of spin and deflection.  He won’t take responsibility.  The tools at the federal government’s disposal lie unused.  At the coronavirus task force briefings, he has stood before the cameras and bragged about his TV ratings and the number of his Facebook followers.  He has wondered out loud if household disinfectants could be injected and ultra-violet light beamed inside the body to kill the virus, triggering a chorus of corrections to keep people from killing themselves. He told us he takes an unproven prophylactic drug that has caused fatal side effects.

What the president seldom expresses is any convincing sense of empathy for those fallen in the war he says he leads.  

Empathy has arisen from the health care workers, from governors and other leaders, from the vast majority of Americans.  This sense of togetherness, that we share a sadness for the COVID-19 victims, we share the grief of their survivors, we share concern for the doctors and nurses and other workers who make our lives livable — the grocery store clerks, the police and firefighters, the delivery workers, the sanitation crews — while we shelter at home, all of this demands a high measure of respect.

Each night at seven, New Yorkers lean out their windows to clap and cheer and bang pots and pans for the nurses and doctors working in the storm of Covid-19 infections.  We’re saluting people who put their own health on the line to keep others from dying.  

They can’t stay at home like the rest of us.  They’re often short protective gear, they work brutal hours that leave them exhausted and, before they go home at risk to their own families, far too often they’re the last person a coronavirus victim sees.  And the virus has killed too many of them.

Our evening demonstrations are a small way to honor these true heroes.  We can do better, though. Let’s keep our flags lowered.  There’s no higher measure of respect than to lower our flags to honor our fighters, all the ones we’ve lost and the ones still fighting every day.

We won’t get a proclamation from this president to mourn his administration, so we should do it on our own.  We have that right.  Let us continue to mourn the victims of the war that the president won’t fight and mourn his failure as a leader.

 Even as shelter-in-place orders are eased and we try to tiptoe back towards normal, the death count keeps rising.  Let’s look to the flags flown at half-height and remember that we’re experiencing an ongoing national tragedy.  Maybe then we’ll remember to protect ourselves and others until we can raise our flag on high again.