A virtual parade and calls for limited gatherings, Americans are celebrating a Thanksgiving Thursday tarnished by the resurgence of the epidemic in the country.
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Pandemic Obliges, the famous Thanksgiving parade with giant balloons that usually brings millions of people to the streets of New York City, will go without an audience this year and will be shown online, with much of the animation filmed in advance of the previous days.
Following the recommendations of the health authorities, President-elect Joe Biden has, like many of his compatriots, given up traveling to spend this family celebration in his home in Delaware in a small committee with his wife, daughter and son-in-law.
“I know that this is not the way many of us hoped to spend the holidays,” said Barack Obama’s ex-right-hand man in a video released on Twitter Thursday.
“It’s a personal sacrifice that every family can and should make to save someone else’s life. It’s a sacrifice for the whole country, ”he added.
California Health Secretary Mark Ghaly said he forbade his own mother to join him for the occasion. “It’s important to say no even when it comes to the people closest to our family,” he said.
A sign of political divisions on how to manage the pandemic and the end-of-year celebrations, President Donald Trump, for his part, encouraged Wednesday “all Americans to assemble, at home and in places of worship” during his Thanksgiving proclamation.
Faced with these contradictory injunctions, nearly seven million people have still flown in the United States over the last seven days, according to data from the TSA agency, in charge of security checks at airports, an increase of 22% compared to the previous week.
But the family reunion, around the traditional stuffed turkey, accompanied by sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce, will not have the same flavor this year as the country has just recorded more than 2,400 deaths from the coronavirus in 24 hours, a highest for six months.
The most bereaved country in the world by the new coronavirus, with more than 262,000 dead since the onset of the disease, the United States could see the number of deaths increase to reach 321,000 dead by December 19, according to the latest projection from the U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC).
Globally, more than 60 million cases of COVID-19 have been officially counted since the start of the pandemic, and nearly 1.4 million people have died from it.
