I think we can all agree that President Joe Biden by no means had an easy time getting into office. From recounts to riots, Biden went through the ringer before he could even step foot in the White House. After everything he went through his inauguration seemed like the perfect way to start a new chapter as president.

Surprisingly, everything went well at the inauguration. But one thing stood out to me: the number of unnecesaary people that attended. Compared to other inaugurations such as Trump’s, the numbers drastically decreased because of COVID-19. However, there were still quite a few people there despite the COVID and security risks.

Biden’s inauguration should have been much smaller considering the severity of COVID and the risk it put National Guard personnel at. 

COVID-19 is still running rampant in the U.S., and does not seem to be going anywhere. According to the CDC, there have been over 400,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. alone. While D.C. has low COVID numbers compared to other places, the inauguration should have only had necessary people as attendees.

There were many people at the inauguration that left me wondering if they really needed to be there. Some of those people included J-Lo and Bernie Sanders. While I love the Bernie Sanders memes that came from the inauguration, it was not necessary that he was there.

However, there where 20,000 necessary National Guard personnel there to protect them, but they seemed to have been forgotten. According to The New York Times, many personnel were forced to sleep in parking garages, which led to around 150 personnel testing positive for COVID. They were keeping the president safe, so why couldn’t he do the same for them?

Having unnecessary people at the inauguration was a slap in the face to the people outside protecting it. While they were jamming to J-Lo, the National Guard was cramming into parking garages and catching COVID.

We need to take the pandemic more seriously and start caring about not only how it is affecting ourselves, but also others. We are all in this together, so we need to start acting like it.