Michael F. Duggan
This week we have all seen or heard the tributes to those lost in the September 11 attacks. Many of them deal with questions of how the attacks changed us or how we feel about them. This is entirely appropriate, especially in light of United States policies since the attacks. Still, I wish more of them dealt with questions about why we were attacked.
There are also questions of proportionality. Do we focus on the September 11 attacks because they were inflicted by a human foe? Was it their dramatic nature or the fact that two of the world’s tallest buildings were completely obliterated? Why are these lives more notable than those lost to COVID-19?
In terms lives lost, the September 11 attacks were roughly on the scale of the Pearl Harbor attack with 2,977 and 2,403 deaths. COVID-19, on the other hand, has exacted a considerably higher number of American lives than all of World War II (to date there have been about 660,000 COVID-19 deaths in the United States compared to 291,577 U.S. combat deaths and 405,399 deaths from all causes during the Second World War). On January 12 of this year, the United States lost 4,327 of its citizens to COVID-19 in a single day—1,350 more than the losses of September 11, 2001—and during the week of the Capitol riot, we lost an average of about 3,300 people per day. Now, with the Delta variant, we are still experiencing about 1,500 deaths every day, or a little more than a September 11-scale attack every two days.