balancing nation's grief and hope
President Biden mourns 500,000 dead, balancing nation's grief and hope With sunset remarks and a national moment of silence, President Joe Biden on Monday confronted head-on the country's once-unimaginable loss — half 1,000,000 Americans within the COVID-19 pandemic — as he tried to strike a balance between mourning and hope. Addressing the "grim, heartbreaking milestone" directly and publicly, Biden stepped to a lectern within the White House Cross Hall, unhooked his mask and delivered an emotion-filled eulogy for 500,071 Americans he said he felt he knew. "We often hear people described as ordinary Americans. there's no such thing," he said Monday evening. "There's nothing ordinary about them. The people we lost were extraordinary." "Just like that," he added, "so many of them took their last breath alone." A president whose own life has been marked by family tragedy, Biden spoke in deeply personal terms, referencing...