[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 135 (Thursday, July 30, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4600-S4601]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



       Moment of Silence for the Victims of the Novel Coronavirus

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, the Senate will soon acknowledge a 
moment of silence for the 150,000 Americans who have now died from 
COVID-19--more lives than our country lost in World War I. This 
national tragedy is more keenly felt because it has not and cannot be 
properly mourned. One of the most devastating consequences of this 
disease is that it keeps us apart even in death. There is no final 
clutching of the hand of a loved one, no funeral to remember one by. 
Grandchildren, wrapped in protective gear, wave goodbye from across the 
hospital room. There are 150,000 Americans who have died, which is more 
than in any other nation on God's green Earth--more than of our allies 
and more than of our adversaries, more than in the most populous 
nations, more than in those with mere fractions of our wealth and 
power, and more--so many more--than in the nation from which this virus 
originated.
  We will debate the reasons for this ugly truth--we must--if we are to 
avoid compounding our errors and heaping sorrow upon sorrow as the

[[Page S4601]]

virus continues to rage throughout our country. Yet now we spend a 
moment to acknowledge how much our country has suffered already.
  We have lost friends and neighbors, brothers and sisters, fathers and 
daughters, mothers and sons, a beloved professor at Howard University, 
a civil rights pioneer, and a renowned psychiatrist. We have lost a 
Brooklyn doctor, at 62, on the verge of retirement, who in the early 
weeks of the crisis in New York, worked day shifts at the ICU and night 
shifts at the Hospital Center across the street before finally 
succumbing to the disease himself. We have lost so many in so short a 
time. Unable to grieve them in the manner they deserve, we respect this 
moment of silence, this moment of sorrow.
  I ask unanimous consent that there be a moment of silence to 
recognize the more than 150,000 American deaths from the novel 
coronavirus.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  There will now be a moment of silence to recognize the American 
deaths from the novel coronavirus.
  (Moment of silence.