[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 103 (Monday, June 14, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4503-S4504]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CORONAVIRUS

  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, tonight, congressional leaders will 
mark what is hopefully the final somber milestone of the COVID 
pandemic: 600,000 American lives lost to the disease. It is 
particularly jarring at this moment--a moment of recovery, optimism, 
and hope--to remember the enormity of lives lost over the past 15 
months. Not only that, we face the grim reality that the recent 
fatalities happened while Americans were on the verge of getting 
vaccinated. Some had their appointment just days away.
  So as our fellow Americans are taking their masks off, going back to 
work, seeing families and friends, and returning, as they should, to 
life, let us remember those who cannot. Let us hold them in our hearts 
a little while longer.

[[Page S4504]]

  I am reminded of the famous meditation by the English soldier and 
poet John Donne, who told us that ``no man is an island, entire of 
itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. So 
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less.''
  ``Any man's death diminishes me,'' he said, ``because I am involved 
in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 
it tolls for thee.''
  The bells have tolled for 600,000 Americans this past year, a 
staggering and incomprehensible sum. Remember them. Hold them in your 
hearts a little while longer.

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