The virus

At the time of my July 13th post, which concerned COVID-19, the U.S. had reached 135,000 deaths from the virus.

Today, sixteen days later, the number of deaths in America passed 150,000.

John Lewis

This is a 2007 portrait of Congressman Lewis--a brave, heroic man--who died on Friday, at age 80.

The photograph, by Eric Etheridge, is from Etheridge's 2008 book, Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders (New York: Atlas & Co. Publishers).

https://www.amazon.com/Breach-Peace-Portraits-Mississippi-Freedom/dp/097774339X/ref

The President, and COVID-19

For some time, it is clear, President Trump has been pretty much done with COVID.

On June 17th, he said that the coronavirus was "dying out."

Nine days before, on June 8th, he said: "We may have some embers or some ashes, or we may have some flames coming, but we'll put them out.  We'll stomp them out.  We understand this now. We'll stomp them out and we'll stomp them out very, very powerfully."

On July 2nd--his impersonal locution, I think, was interesting; it was suggestive, perhaps, of his own remove from the issue--he said: "The crisis is being handled." 

  

Two days later, during a July 4th address, he sought to minimize the virus's severity.  He said that "we have tested over 40 million people. By so doing, we show cases, 99% of which are totally harmless."

My previous post was written June 22nd. At that time, more than 120,000 Americans had died as a result of the virus. 

As of today--three weeks later--there have been approximately 15,000 additional American deaths.