About Coronavirus 2020
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This morning, the last of 20,000 American flags were placed around the Washington Monument facing the White House. The flags represent the almost 200,000 lives lost to the Covid-19 pandemic, a threshold the country is quickly approaching. As of this morning, there have been 199,890 Covid-19-related American deaths, according to a Johns Hopkins tracker.
The Covid Memorial Project is headed by a group of DC friends, who organized a GoFundMe to launch the project. “This administration has done nothing to memorialize this stunning number of lives lost,” reads the Kickstarter blurb. “No flags lowered, no service held, no day of mourning declared—so the COVID Memorial Project seeks to simply say: these lives are more than a statistic—they were family, friends, neighbors.”
The group began installing flags last night, and an interfaith memorial service was held this morning as the remaining flags were planted. The flags will remain on the mall through sunset on September 23.
Mimi Montgomery joined Washingtonian in 2018. She’s written for The Washington Post, Garden & Gun, Outside Magazine, Washington City Paper, DCist, and PoPVille. Originally from North Carolina, she now lives in Del Ray.
