By Michael F. Duggan
On December 10, 2020, the number of Americans who had died of COVID-19 surpassed the number of United States combat deaths in the Second World War (given as 291,557). Sometime in January we will surpass U.S. deaths from all causes in World War II (405,399). In spite of news stories about overrun ICU wards and people who have lost relatives, there is not an overwhelming sense loss among many of our people. Some defiant Americans still think that the pandemic is a hoax or else real but greatly exaggerated, a bad flu season. Even with social media memes taking shots at 2020—as if a year was a person to be insulted or shamed—it just doesn’t feel like we are living in a nation that has lost more than one-third of a million people in ten months. We are still met with happy, reassuring commercials when we turn on the television. At worst we see sympathetic pitchmen/women referencing “these difficult times” and the “new normal.”
And then there is the official response. Even with the impressive development of several effective vaccines, and now the massive logistical efforts to distribute them, there is still no universal national mobilization like that of the war years. Lacking sufficient commonsense and a national will to defeat the virus through minor sacrifices (we are being asked to wear a mask in public after all and not to die on the beaches of an island in the South Pacific) and by altering our behavior, we must rely now on medical technology to save us. New Zealand lost 25 people to the virus without a vaccine. Taiwan lost 7. With almost 20 million infections and more than 340,000 deaths in this country, the Great Abdication continues.
Many of us feel the pandemic as a menacing omnipresence lingering unseen in the air we breath. We know its scale and scope as abstractions and from news stories with nurses weeping for people who died in their arms that day, and the day before, and the day before that. But empathizing with someone who has been punched in the stomach is not the same as being punched yourself. Unless you are a front line medical professional or know someone who died of COVID-19, it is hard to personalize the all-pervasive sense of loss felt by an increasing number of Americans. The PBS News Hour has made an admirable effort to spotlight ordinary people who have died and their families.
When all COVID and non-COVID deaths are tallied, 2020 turns out to be a dour year for the Mass Culture. With the deaths of Olivia De Havilland and Kirk Douglas, a final door seems to have closed on the Golden Age of Hollywood. Sports and entertainment took heavy hits with the deaths of Wilford Brimley, Lou Brock, Kobe Bryant, Pierre Cardin, Sean Connery, Robert Conrad, Charley Daniels, Brian Dennehy, Whitey Ford, Buck Henry, Ian Holm, James Lipton, Rebecca Luker, Vera Lynn, Ellis Marsalis, Jr., Johnny Nash, Curly Neal, Geoffrey Palmer, Charley Pride, John Prine, Helen Reddy, Carl Reiner, Ann Reinking, Little Richard, Diana Rigg, Kenny Rogers, Tom Seaver, Jerry Stiller, Alex Trebek, Max von Sydow, Fred Willard, Bill Withers, and now Dawn Wells, to name a few. We also lost the man who broke the sound barrier.
The purview of this blog is policy and comment and there were notable losses in government too. It seems a little odd to single out the passing of a noble-minded few during a pandemic, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Lewis, both of whom comfortably bear the appositive “the great,” are gone. Gone too is foreign policy advisor, Brent Scowcroft, a great realist, public servant, and gentleman.
It was an especially bad year for independent voices. Stephen F. Cohen, Robert Fisk, and Pete Hamill are gone. You will find tributes to all three of these writers (and Brent Scowcroft) on this blog. Take note of benevolent leaders and fearless independent voices while they live. It will make you appreciate what is good, what still works, and what courage still exists in the world, while it exists in the world.
As human beings continue to violently encroach into hitherto undisturbed wild areas and come into direct contact with animals that are hosts to wide ranges of viruses, one can only wonder if 2020 is a demarcation that marks an opening shot of the Apocalypse of the environment.
I apologize for the tone of this somber posting. Indeed there are things to be optimistic about, especially the vaccines that promise to ease and perhaps defeat the pandemic. There is also a majority of people who do take the crisis seriously. But with an even more contagious mutated variation of the disease abroad in the world (and now in the United States), one wonders if the future of our species will be a series of desperate efforts to stamp out pathogenic brush fires—outbreaks—as they crop up and before they become pandemics. It is possible that variants of COVID-19 will become seasonal, like the cold and flu. Vaccines are now in the offing with 95% effectiveness against the present virus in its current form. The time may come when we have to face pathogens that are more problematic than the current one. It is therefore in our interest to leave alone the remaining unspoiled habitats of the world and the creatures therein.