On the eve of his inauguration, President-elect Joe Biden took on the role assigned to him by President Donald Trump and led the nation in mourning for the 400,000 people in the United States who died in the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden was introduced at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool by Lori Marie Key – a Michigan nurse on the front line of Covid-19 – who sang “Amazing Grace”.
“To heal, we must remember,” said Biden, after acknowledging the risks and sacrifices nurses made during the pandemic. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember. But that’s how we heal. It’s important to do this as a nation.”
Joining Biden for the dark ceremony were elected Vice President Kamala Harris, along with Biden and Harris’ wives. Everyone wore pandemic masks and warm coats against the winter chill.
The couples held hands while gospel singer Yolanda Adams sang “Hallelujah” and 400 lights were lit along the perimeter of the pool, each representing 1,000 people lost to the coronavirus.
“We met tonight, a nation of mourning, to honor the lives we lost,” said Harris earlier. “For many months, we suffered for ourselves. Tonight we suffered together.”
As Biden and Harris spoke, the nation’s capital was an armed camp, with thousands of soldiers and police on hand to ensure that changing the guard at the White House on Wednesday is peaceful.
“We regret every lost life,” Trump said earlier in a farewell speech recorded at the White House, where he was due to leave for Florida on Wednesday morning, before taking office.
As the United States eclipsed an impressive milestone – the death of the 400,000th coronavirus – Biden is preparing to take over the country after a bitter election that was followed by a shocking attempt to overthrow the will of the people by Trump’s most fervent supporters.
In New York City, the top of the Empire State Building was lit up in memory of the victims of Covid-19 as a flashing red heartbeat, in sync with the sound of “Empire State of Mind” by Alicia Keys.
In Seattle and Houston, skyscrapers were lit with amber lights to remind the dead. And many state capitals across the country, including the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee, have been lit in the same amber tone.
In New Orleans, white flags for coronavirus victims were raised in Lafayette Square before the ceremony.
In Chicago, The Loop’s towers went dark for 10 minutes. Chicagoans were asked to turn off their phones and leave their homes at 6:10 pm CT with candles lit “to symbolize the passage from darkness to light,” said the mayor’s office.
The Covid-19 memorials were also held in both hometowns of Biden, Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Wilmington, Delaware.
And across the country, in communities large and small, church bells rang to recognize the dead.
At the National Mall, thousands of small US and territorial flags were sentinel, dumb substitutes for those who would have participated in the inauguration had it not been for the pandemic – and for people lost to a silent killer.
