In a May 15 Washington Post article, Micki McElya '94, who majored in history at Bryn Mawr, writes about the absence of collective mourning in response to the more than 85,000 U.S. deaths caused by the coronavirus and Covid-19.
From the article:
"There have been no political funerals for the pandemic dead. In the absence of official national mourning, we’ve not seen many spontaneous memorials or vigils at all. Instead, plenty of flag-waving demonstrations to end stay-at-home orders and reopen businesses pop up all over the country. We’ve seen American Patriot Rally protesters armed with rifles in the Michigan State House as legislators debated whether to approve the governor’s request to extend the shutdown in that state. We’ve seen pandemic-fatigued New Yorkers rush to parks on the first warm day, barely distanced and some unmasked. But we’ve seen no comparable mass action for the dead."
Read the full article on The Washington Post website. McElya is the author of The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery, a 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist for general nonfiction. She is a professor of history at the University of Connecticut.