As I reflect on the 19th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 here in New York City as well as in Washington, D.C. and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, let me draw your attention to what I wrote exactly six months ago today:
Although the Coronavirus became a global public health concern at the end of January, it has only been over the past week or so that I every time I walk out into the streets of New York City nearly every conversation I hear is about the Coronavirus. The only other I ever experienced something like this was in the days following the September 11th attacks when I lived in Boston (no doubt those conversations in NYC were a thousand fold). The difference is that those conversations in 2001 concerned an event which had already occurred whereas with the Coronavirus conversations the discussion revolves around an event where the worst is yet to come.
As of this morning, COVID-19 has infected nearly 6.4 million Americans (6,397,245) while claiming the lives of 191,791 people in the United States and the worst of it still isn't over.
Even if COVID were to stop claiming the lives of Americans today, the death toll is the equivalent of 64 9/11 attacks. That would be roughly one 9/11 scale attack every 72 hours.
This is not to minimize the impact of what happened on September 11, 2001. After all, al Qaeda was bent on murdering as many Americans as possible. They would have been delighted had they killed 3,000, 30,000 or 300,000 Americans that day. If not for the passengers of United 93 a lot more people would have been killed had the plane crashed into Capitol Hill or the White House. The events of that day will remain with the families of those who lost loved ones forever as well as the families of those who lost loved ones in the War in Afghanistan which is still being fought to this very day.
In the years that followed, there were several significant acts of terrorism inspired by radical Islamic ideology committed on American soil such as the Fort Hood shootings, the Boston Marathon Bombing, the San Bernardino attacks and the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. While those attacks did not result in the same scale of death and destruction the aims and objectives were the same. Sooner or later, there will be another attack against American civilians committed in the name of radical Islamic ideology and perhaps one with a death toll greater than the 2,977 Americans killed 19 years ago today.
Yes, we will spend this day reflecting on the evil and carnage which was wrought on that Tuesday morning. But we will put it aside on September 12th. The same cannot be said of a COVID pandemic has brought about a pain upon this country with no end in sight. Disease and death have been accompanied by economic depression, racial tensions and civil unrest all of which have been exacerbated by President Trump through a combination of incompetence and malevolence.
While COVID has wrought agony all over the world, it has reserved its greatest carnage in the United States which currently has 22.7% of the world's cases (28,176,532) and 21.1% of the world's deaths (909,679) despite only 4% of the global population. The tragedy is that much of this could have been prevented if we had a competent and empathetic President. This tragedy will be compounded if Americans see fit to keep this President in office in a little over 50 days from now.
As with those who sought to deny or minimize 9/11 there is an even more significant segment of the population which seeks to deny or minimize COVID-19. Indeed, an argument could be made that one conspiracy theory feeds into the other (i.e. the QAnon crazed GOP congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor-Greene). It is all the more reason to never forget what happened 19 years ago today even as we struggle with a far more immediate and deadly crisis. Yet it is difficult to keep the memory of 9/11 alive when a critical mass of people in this country are unprepared to cover their mouth and nose with a mask. These people prefer to wear masks over their eyes. Some people never learn. Some people simply don't want to learn content with easy answers.
COVID will eventually be defeated or at least managed to a point where we don't need to wear masks or maintain social distance. But how are we to commemorate all those who died of it? Setting aside a single day would hardly do it justice. Unless, of course, we choose to commemorate the day the vaccine or therapeutic was discovered or disseminated. Naturally this a discussion for a different day. But we will have to discuss it.
Until that day, perhaps the best we can do as Americans this 9/11 is to aim for the sort of unity around combating COVID-19 that we had 19 years ago. This will be an enormously difficult task under our current conditions but it is a task to which we must commit if we want to overcome COVID. Alas our commitment to the task probably won't be known until November 3rd - if then.
In which case, perhaps we will have our answer on this very day next year when we commemorate the 20th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001.
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