I am writing this on Memorial Day. The death toll for Covid-19 is about to surpass 100,000 and Donald Trump was seen golfing on Saturday May 23, and Sunday May 24, at Trump National Golf Club in Virginia in the midst of the pandemic. According to CNN, Trump visited Trump-owned golf courses 92 times between becoming president in January 2017 and January 3, 2018. Trump’s last golf outing was on March 8, 2020 when he visited the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. He wouldn’t dare golf there now, since Palm Beach has been a hot spot for the Covid-19 virus. As of Memorial day there were 16,522 cases of the virus in Miami Dade County with 614 death. By comparison Laudon County Virginia has 1195 cases of Covid-19 and 30 deaths, which is a far safer bet for the president who refuses to wear a face mask.
I began to wonder, how do you visualize 100000 lives lost? 100,000 people with dreams and aspirations. The New York Times listed 1000 obits of people lost to the virus on it’s front page. It is a sobering reminder of loss that the president would rather we did not remember as he rushes to get the economy back up and running at any cost.
If one shoe were added to a pile on a golf course for every American lost, how big would that mountain of shoes become? I remembered seeing a mountain of shoes of victims of the holocaust at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. In the Holocaust about 11 million lives were lost to man’s inhumanity to man. Today lives are being lost to indifference and incompetence. Besides golfing, Trump also fired off angry and hateful tweets. I have stopped paying attention to those rants.
Researchers at Columbia University this week estimated about 36,000 lives in the United States could have been saved from the Covid-19 had social distancing and other restrictions been put in place earlier in March. The researchers determined that if the measures had begun two weeks earlier, then 82.7% of deaths and 84% of infections — or about 53,990 deaths and 960,937 cases, could have been prevented nationwide. The study has not yet undergone the typical scientific peer review process, and all models are merely estimates, subject to change with new information.
The former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, Rick Bright said, “If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities …Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be darkest winter in modern history.”
According to CNN, a leading infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm at the University of Minnesota estimates that there could be as many as 800,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States over the next 18 months. To date only about 3% of the population has been tested for the virus. Meaning the economy is being opened up blindly. Anyone you meet could be asymptomatic and spread the disease.
It amazes me that so many seem to be rushing out to gather in large groups this holiday weekend because Trump said the worst is behind us. As an artist I can not keep up with so many cases of absolute stupidity.