Let Us Not Forget
For over half of 2020, Americans have sifted through daily reports of those deaths. What began as a trickle of misery out of the Northwest transformed into a flood of hundreds and in some cases thousands of lives lost per day. Suddenly, what would otherwise be canonized as national days of mourning in tribute to those lost were just another day in a horrible year.
With the daily barrage of grim statistics, the actual human cost of coronavirus can often feel too abstract to fully process. In an effort to help contextualize the lethal breadth of the disease, The Daily Beast has visually mapped the death toll of COVID-19 on top of prior national catastrophes: days that “will live in infamy...”, others that Americans vowed to “never forget.”
From the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to the attack on Pearl Harbor, from the sinking of the Titanic to Hurricane Katrina, from the Oklahoma City federal building bombing to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, from the Hindenburg to the Benghazi consulate attack, this is a disturbing look at the human destruction already wrought by COVID-19 compared to some of the most trying moments in American history.
For over half of 2020, Americans have sifted through daily reports of those deaths. What began as a trickle of misery out of the Northwest transformed into a flood of hundreds and in some cases thousands of lives lost per day. Suddenly, what would otherwise be canonized as national days of mourning in tribute to those lost were just another day in a horrible year.
With the daily barrage of grim statistics, the actual human cost of coronavirus can often feel too abstract to fully process. In an effort to help contextualize the lethal breadth of the disease, The Daily Beast has visually mapped the death toll of COVID-19 on top of prior national catastrophes: days that “will live in infamy...”, others that Americans vowed to “never forget.”
From the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to the attack on Pearl Harbor, from the sinking of the Titanic to Hurricane Katrina, from the Oklahoma City federal building bombing to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, from the Hindenburg to the Benghazi consulate attack, this is a disturbing look at the human destruction already wrought by COVID-19 compared to some of the most trying moments in American history.
