"Never Forget" Means Not Forgetting the 318,981 People Killed By Our Selfishness

Two important questions you should ask the people loudly shouting about "Unity" and "Never Forget" on 9/11

9/11 should be a national holiday. In the same way, Pearl Harbor Day should be a national holiday.

Neither are.

But the more days off we have where national service is encouraged, the better.

We need to spend way more time together, doing something positive for our community, and way less time on the Internet in our respective echo chambers.

So, today is a short post about what we owe each other.

Because you’re going to hear a whole lot of people say stuff like “Never forget” and talk about how “unified” we were in the days and weeks immediately following the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon, in Pennsylvania from a flight heading toward either the White House or the Capitol Building, and the World Trade Center.

When you hear people say that today, you should ask them two questions:

Did you get your COVID-19 vaccination?

Did you wear a mask — and I mean properly wear a mask, not this horseshit where people would put it on and not cover their nose — when asked to do so?

Because if the answer is no to either of those questions, then the answer to the statement “never forget” is, yeah, you did.

And your faux-bullshit patriotism is showing.

Real Americans who put their country first got vaccinated and wore masks in order to protect their friends, families, neighbors, and strangers that they will never know from COVID-19.

The same way those police officers and firefighters ran into the burning Twin Towers on 9/11 to save the lives of people they will never know.

That’s what Patriotism is. You put your country and the people who inhabit it before your own selfish desires, even if it means certain death.

As of this writing, COVID-19 is still the fourth leading cause of death in America.

The COVID-19 Pandemic is the single largest mass casualty event in American History.

Far greater than the 1918 Flu, despite what former President Trump said last night during the presidential debate. (675,000 Americans died during that pandemic.)

Over 1.1 million people, and counting, have died since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March of 2020.

And I’ll remind you, those are only the deaths that we know about. That total does not include data from states like Florida, and right here in New York, that undercounted them.

(Given that former Governor Cuomo thinks he can run for Mayor of New York City, it’s worth remembering how many people he killed through his inaction and deception during the height of the pandemic.)

2,997, by comparison, died at the hands of Al-Qaeda on September 11th, 2021.

Of those 1.1 million Americans who died from COVID-19, 318,981 people died preventable deaths.

That means nearly 30% of Americans who died during the height of the Pandemic could still be with us today had they got vaccinated and worn a mask.

Had YOU put the Country first and got vaccinated and worn your mask properly, we could have eradicated COVID-19 entirely.

That also means 318,981 people died preventable deaths because of disinformation spread about the virus and the ability of the vaccinations to handle them.

The largest super spreader of this disinformation was Donald Trump. The second largest was Ron DeSantis in Florida.

There were others, of course, but the fact that we have a presidential election coming up where one of the candidates singlehandedly contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans and that not be disqualifying, tells you everything you need to know about the MAGA movement.

To say nothing of the repeated failure of normal Republicans to stand up to them.

If you want to remember the victims of 9/11 properly, the least anyone can do is get vaccinated and wear a mask during surges of the virus like we had this Summer.

If you want to remember the victims of 9/11 properly, you can hold some of the loudest among us to account by asking them if they got vaccinated and wore masks when asked to do so.

If you want to remember the victims of 9/11 properly, you can call out disinformation about vaccines and the virus whenever you see it, no different than how everyone in New York was asked to step on those spotted lanternflies.

Remember that number: 318,981.

Every time you see someone spread disinformation.

Because disinformation kills, and so does the faux patriotism of “Never Forget” when it’s said by people who couldn’t be bothered to do the minimum required of them during America’s largest disaster.