Country reaches a tragic milestone
Heartache deepens as virus death toll in US surpasses 500K
For weeks after Cindy Pollock began planting tiny flags across her yard — one for each of the more than 1,800 Idahoans killed by COVID-19 — the toll was mostly a number. Until two women she had never met rang her doorbell in tears, seeking a place to mourn the husband and father they had just lost.
Then Pollock knew her tribute, however heartfelt, would never begin to convey the grief of a pandemic that has now claimed 500,000 lives in the U.S. and counting.
“I just wanted to hug them,” she said. “Because that was all I could do.”
President Joe Biden marked the tragedy Monday night. It’s a “truly grim, heartbreaking milestone.”
Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses later held a moment of silence at a vigil at the White House. Biden also ordered U.S. flags lowered at federal buildings for the next five days.
After a year that has darkened doorways across the nation, the pandemic surpassed a milestone that once seemed unimaginable, a reminder of the virus’s reach into all corners of the country.
“It’s very hard for me to imagine an American who doesn’t know someone who has died or have a family member who has died,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics at the University of Washington in Seattle. Experts warn that over 100,000 more deaths are likely in the next few months, despite a massive campaign to vaccinate people.
Meanwhile, the nation’s trauma continues to accrue in a way unparalleled in recent life, said Donna Schuurman of the Dougy Center for Grieving Children & Families in Portland, Oregon.
At other moments of epic loss, like the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Americans have pulled together. But this time, the nation is deeply divided. Staggering numbers of families are dealing with death, serious illness and financial hardship. And many are left to cope in isolation, unable even to hold funerals.
“In a way, we’re all grieving,” said Schuurman, who has counseled the families of those killed in terrorist attacks, natural disasters and school shootings.
The death toll recorded by Johns Hopkins University
is already greater than the population of Miami or Kansas City, Missouri. It is roughly equal to the number of Americans killed in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. It is akin to a 9/11 every day for nearly six months.
The toll, accounting for 1 in 5 deaths reported worldwide, has exceeded early projections, which assumed that federal and state governments would marshal a comprehensive and sustained response and individual Americans would heed warnings. Instead, a push to reopen the economy last spring and the refusal by many to maintain social distancing and wear face masks fueled the spread.
The figures do not come close to capturing the heartbreak.
“I never once doubted that
he was not going to make it. ... I so believed in him and my faith,” said Nancy Espinoza, whose husband, Antonio, was hospitalized with COVID-19 last month.
The couple from Riverside County, California, had been together since high school. They pursued parallel nursing careers and started a family. Then, on Jan. 25, Nancy was called to Antonio’s bedside just before his heart beat its last. He was 36 and left behind a 3-year-old son.
“Today it’s us. And tomorrow it could be anybody,” she said.
By late last fall, 54 percent of Americans reported knowing someone who had died of COVID-19 or had been hospitalized with it, according to a Pew Research Center poll. The grieving was more widespread
among Black Americans, Hispanics and other minorities.
Deaths have nearly doubled since then, with the scourge spreading far beyond the Northeast and Northwest metropolitan areas slammed by the virus last spring and the Sun Belt cities hit hard last summer.
In some places, the seriousness of the threat was slow to sink in.
When a beloved professor at a community college in Petoskey, Michigan, died last spring, residents mourned, but many remained doubtful of the threat’s severity, Mayor John Murphy said. That changed over the summer after a l ocal family hosted a party in a barn. Of the 50 who attended, 33 became infected. Three died, he said.
“I think at a distance
people felt, ‘This isn’t going to get me,’ ” Murphy said. “But over time, the attitude has totally changed from ‘Not me. Not our area. I’m not old enough,’ to where it became the real deal.”
In Boise, Idaho, Pollock started the memorial in her yard to counter what she saw as widespread denial of the threat. When deaths spiked in December, she was planting 25 to 30 flags at a time.
But her frustration has been eased somewhat by those who slow or stop to pay respect or to mourn.
“I think that is part of what I was wanting, to get people talking,” she said, “Not just like, ‘Look at how many flags are in the yard today compared to last month,’ but trying to help people who have lost loved ones talk to other people.”
Grammy-winning electronic music pioneers Daft Punk have announced that they are breaking up after 28 years.
The helmet-wearing French duo shared the news Monday in an eight-minute video called “Epilogue.” Kathryn Frazier, the band’s longtime publicist, confirmed the breakup.
Daft Punk, composed of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de HomemChristo, have had major success over the years, winning six Grammy Awards and launching international hits with “One More Time,” “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” and “Get Lucky.”
Bangalter and de Homem-Christo met at a Paris school in 1987. Prior to Daft Punk, they formed an indie rock band named Darling.
They officially formed Daft Punk in 1993, and the helmeted, mute and mysterious musicians released their debut album, “Homework,” in 1997. They first found success with the international hit “Da Funk,” which topped the Billboard dance charts and earned them their first Grammy nomination. A second No. 1 hit and Grammy nomination followed with “Around the World.”
Daft Punk spent time touring around the world and reached greater heights with their sophomore album, 2001’s “Discovery.” But it was the 2014 Grammys where Daft Punk really took the spotlight, winning album of the year for “Random Access Memories” and making history as the first electronic act to win the highest honor at the Grammys.
“Random Access Memories” was regarded as a genre-bending album highlighted by its mix of live instrumentation, disco
sounds, funk, rock, R&B and more. Rolling Stone ranked it No. 295 on their list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” last year.
If she wasn’t already, Mila Kunis is now the “Luckiest Girl Alive,” signing on to star in the film adaptation of the best-selling novel for Netflix.
Kunis stars as Ani FaNell in the upcoming film, based on Jessica Knoll’s 2015 New York Times best-selling thriller about a New York magazine editor whose “meticulously crafted life” is upended when a crime documentary forces her to relive the shocking truths of a devastating incident from her teenage years. The “Bad Moms” star will also produce the project under her Orchard Farm Productions banner.
Knoll is adapting the screenplay and will serve as an executive producer on the film, directed by Mike Barker.
Kunis lands lucky role: ‘Birth of Cool’ dramedy in works:
BET Plus has ordered the original series “Birth of Cool” in its firstever partnership with “Gentefied” producers Macro Television Studios
and Emmy-Award winning screenwriter and actor Lena Waithe’s production house Hillman Grad Productions.
The 10-episode halfhour dramedy marks Waithe’s third original production with the brand— her other two series with BET are “Twenties” and “Boomerang.”
“Birth of Cool” follows the adventures and misadventures of both students and teachers at Crispus Attucks High, a predominantly black high school in Compton, as they try to make it through the weird, hilarious, stressful, often sobering and sometimes surreal academic year while hopefully growing a bit in the process on- and off-campus.
The show was created by writer-director Juel Taylor and writer Tony Rettenmaier.
Steel guitarist Rusty Young is 75. Actor Patricia Richardson is 70. Actor Kristin Davis is 56. Actor Niecy Nash is 51. Songwriter Robert Lopez is 46. Actor Kelly Macdonald is 45. Rapper Residente is 43. Actor Josh Gad is 40. Actor Aziz Ansari is 38. Actor Emily Blunt is 38. Actor Dakota Fanning is 27.
Feb. 23 birthdays: