Shortly before holding a candle lighting ceremony and a moment of silence at the White House honoring the more than 500,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19 thus far, President Biden delivered emotional remarks in which he spoke of his personal experience with grief while empathizing with families who lost loved ones amid the pandemic.
Biden began his remarks by expressing his sorrow over the “truly grim, heartbreaking milestone” of the country hitting 500,000 COVID-19 fatalities.
“That’s more Americans who’ve died in one year in this pandemic than in World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam war combined,” Biden said. “That’s more lives lost to this virus than any other nation on Earth.”
Biden implored the public to remember the people who died from COVID-19 and the lives they lived.
“We often hear people described as ordinary Americans. There’s no such thing. There’s nothing ordinary about them. The people we lost were extraordinary,” Biden said. “They spanned generations. Born in America, immigrated to America. But just like that so many of them took their final breath alone in America.”
Biden urged the country against accepting “such a cruel fate” and “becoming numb to the sorrow” of the jarring amount of lives lost to COVID.
“As a nation we can’t accept such a cruel fate. While we’re fighting this pandemic for so long, we have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow. We have to resist viewing each life as a statistic or a blur or on the news,” Biden said. “We must do so to honor the dead. But equally important, care for the living, those left behind.”
Biden drew from his personal experiences with grief and the “black hole” that’s left in the aftermath of a loved one’s death as he empathized with “survivor’s remorse.”
“For the loved ones left behind I know all too well, I know what it’s like to not be there when it happens. I know what it’s like when you are there holding their hands, looking in their eye as they slip away,” Biden said. “That black hole in your chest, you feel like you’re being sucked into it. The survivor’s remorse, the anger, the questions of faith in your soul.”
After saying that the country cannot and “must not let this go on,” Biden reiterated his remarks on the eve of his inauguration last month at the COVID-19 memorial along the edges of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, when the President said “to heal, we must remember.”
“I know it’s hard. I promise you, I know it’s hard. I remember. But that’s how you feel. You have to remember. And it’s also important to do that as a nation,” Biden said. “For those who’ve lost loved ones this is what I know. They’re never truly gone. They’ll always be part of your heart.”
Promising that the day will come when those who’ve lost a loved one will have a memory of them that will “bring a smile to your lips before a tear to your eye,” Biden assured those who are grieving amid the COVID-19 pandemic that they will find purpose by honoring the lives of the deceased.
“You’re going to be okay. And for me the way through sorrow and grief is to find purpose,” Biden said. “I don’t know how many who’ve lost someone a while ago are wondering: is he or she proud of me now, is this the thing they want me to do? I know that’s how I feel. And we can find purpose. Purpose worthy of the lives they lived and worthy of the country we love.”
Biden urged Americans to adhere to mitigation strategies to reduce the spread of COVID-19, and therefore save more lives regardless of people’s political affiliation.
“We must end the politics and misinformation that’s divided families, communities and the country. It’s cost too many lives already,” Biden said. “It’s not Democrats or Republicans that are dying from the virus. It’s our fellow Americans.”
Biden concluded his remarks on an optimistic note as he expressed his condolences to those grieving during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This nation will smile again. This nation will know sunny days again. This nation will know joy again. And as we do, we’ll remember each person we’ve lost, the lives they lived, the loved ones they left behind,” Biden said. “We will get through this, I promise you. But my heart aches for you, those of you who are going through it right now. May God bless you all, particularly those who’ve lost someone.”
Watch Biden’s remarks below:
What, no coverage of the Mar-e-Coli memorial?
Biden’s Revolution Is Doing What Obama and Clinton Did Not
‘MAKE ME DO IT’
One month in, the 46th president is respecting the left even when it wants to go further than he will, and he’s dismissing bad-faith conservative complaints about his agenda.
Michael Tomasky
Special Correspondent
Updated Feb. 22, 2021 7:12AM ET / Published Feb. 22, 2021 4:05AM ET
We’re one month and change into the Biden presidency, and let’s just say it. He’s been staggeringly good. He has way surpassed my expectations. And it’s small wonder he has a 63 percent approval rating. Most people like what they see.
What’s he done, in big-picture terms? Three things. First and foremost, he and his team are not letting themselves be bullied by the economic supply-siders and neoliberals who’ve spent the last few decades transferring $50 trillion in wealth from the middle class to the rich.
Second, the Biden team understands that the standard Beltway definition of bipartisanship is useless with today’s Republican Party. The Biden people get that congressional Republicans don’t even really represent most rank-and-file Republicans anymore—hence these polls showing significant support even among Republicans for most aspects of the COVID relief bill. This administration shows every sign of not letting itself get suckered into the false promise of trying to win Republican votes that aren’t likely to materialize.
Third, they don’t have contempt for Democrats to their left, which is a great thing to see. History tells us pretty clearly in my view that progress is made in this country when activists on the left go out and agitate and change public opinion and liberals codify that change by writing laws. The Biden people clearly agree with this view.
more…
I am grateful for this man in this moment. Nothing can undo the 500,000 deaths. We can only mourn.
I don’t personally know anyone who’s died. But I know what sorrow is. Biden knows it all too well, and my God can he speak to it. Fifty years ago he found a way, for his surviving children’s sake, to keep his sanity and find a positive way forward. A half a million dead is a terrible toll, but it helps that Joe is there to help us deal with it. The nation showed its unreliable but familiar intuitive wisdom choosing him.
This language is going to bother no one more than those who deny that neoliberalism exists.