Biden To Hold Candle Lighting Ceremony At WH As US Nears 500,000 COVID Deaths

President Joe Biden speaks briefly to reporters on his way to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on February 16, 2021. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will hold a candle lighting ceremony and a moment of silence at the White House on Monday at sundown as the U.S. approaches a grim milestone of half a million deaths in the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the White House schedule, Biden will first give a speech at the Cross Hall before holding the ceremony in the South Portico.

As of Monday morning, Johns Hopkins University reports that 498,901 Americans have died from the virus.

The COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. has now surpassed the number of Americans who died in combat during the two World Wars and the Vietnam War combined, per Yahoo News and the New York Times.

The staggering figure shows that country has by far the highest reported COVID-19 death toll in the world. Brazil comes next at 246,504, according to Johns Hopkins.

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  1. a lot better than the previous “it wasn’t me” bulls*it

  2. Avatar for nycabj nycabj says:

    Good. But I keep thinking there should be a separate section to memorialize all the unnecessary deaths caused by the former WH occupant.

  3. Biden had a good month as President. Once Trump declares his candidacy for the 2024 campaign at CPAC all the coverage will shift back to Trump’s antics. 4 years of MAGA rallies coming our way.

  4. I read an estimate of 200,000. A lot of souls. But it’s hard to say. I once did a napkin estimate of my own based on death rates in South Korea, and at their per-capita rate we’d have lost about 14,000. Purely hypothetical if that were remotely possible here, of course. But I think most agree we could have done better. Johns Hopkins has us fifth from the top in per-capita deaths.

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