Daily US Times: Hours from the inauguration, the incoming US president Joe Biden paused on what might have been his triumphal entrance to Washington on Tuesday evening to mark instead the national tragedy of the Covid-19 pandemic with a moment of collective grief for Americans lost.
His arrival coincided with the awful news that the US coronavirus death toll had surpassed 400,000 in the worst public health crisis in more than a century — a crisis Joe Biden will now be charged with controlling.
“To heal we must remember,” Mr Biden told the nation at a sunset ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial. Four hundred lights representing the coronavirus pandemic’s victims were illuminated behind him around the monument’s Reflecting Pool.
Biden said: “Between sundown and dusk, let us shine the lights into the darkness … and remember all who we lost.”
The sober moment on the eve of Biden’s inauguration — typically a celebratory time in the capital Washington DC when the nation marks the democratic tradition of a peaceful transition of power — was a measure of the enormity of loss and grief for the nation.
During his brief remarks, Joe Biden faced the larger-than life statue of Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War time president who served as more than 600,000 Americans died.
As Biden turned to walk away at the conclusion of the vigil, he faced the black granite wall listing the 58,000-plus Americans who perished in Vietnam.
Biden was joined by Vice President-elect Kamala Harris who has spoken sparingly about the pandemic in recent months.
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