Professor Lincoln: U.S. Should Start Memorializing COVID-19's Victims Now

CNN -- Martha Lincoln is an assistant professor of Anthropology at San Francisco State University and author of a forthcoming book, “Epidemic Politics in Contemporary Vietnam: Public Health and the State.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own.

“Understandably, Americans feel discomfort with the politics of the pandemic; we are uncertain about the meaning of Covid deaths; we want to move on. We may also be reluctant to make a gesture seen as symbolic. But symbols matter,” Lincoln wrote. “Once spaces to remember the pandemic are established, we should leverage their symbolic power to support demands for making the health of all Americans a priority in government policy.”