Dear Elli,
It dawned upon me fully today that I have become slightly unhinged. Now before you get all concerned and have me committed or something, let me explain. I swear I'm not gonna do anything crazy. I'm just gonna tell you why I'm feeling slightly unhinged.
The world is a shitstorm. Everywhere I look. A total shitstorm. And I've never been so disgusted in my entire life. Never.
Today, as I sat at my desk and watched literally nothing happen at work all day, I could feel the disgust bubbling in my gut. By 3pm, I gave up. I logged off and rage cleaned the entire house with my Spotify Playlist shaking the windows.
Poor me, right? Sitting over here in the suburbs with my job currently intact, your dad's job currently intact, everyone we know healthy, and with all the benefits life has to offer sitting right here in my lap. I know. Believe me. I know how lucky we are right now. And I know exactly how unlucky a lot of other people are right now. And that's exactly why I'm disgusted.
We're sitting pretty over here in suburbia diligently wearing our masks at Target, getting our sushi to go, and elbow bumping each other in the parking lot. Like, "Hey Dave, how was your super heavy load of Zoom meetings today? Great to see ya! Stay healthy, buddy!"
"This is our new normal", we say. I can't even count the number of times I've heard that or something similar over the past five months. The white collar paper pushers are diligently working from home all day every day. We're doing okay so far. I know. I'm one of them.
And we think we don't need to go anywhere. We think nobody needs to go anywhere or do anything. "We're leveraging technology to support our new normal", we say. Everything is fine. It's just a different way of doing business. Just a different way of doing school. Just a different way of doing life. We haven't missed a meal. Haven't missed a paycheck. The stock market looks alright. We're fine. Everything is totally fine. This is just the new normal.
The slightly unhinged part of me wants to punch somebody in the mouth.
I want to say, "Hey Dave, buddy! How about we look around a little. For the love of God, let's look AROUND!" Let's look past our half-acre lots, our incessant watching out the window for the Amazon guy, and our big wait for the next Zoom meeting to begin.
This is not any kind of normal, new or otherwise. And things are not fine. Not by any stretch of the imagination. We are not fine.
Let's turn off the TV and log out of social media for a minute and dig just a little bit deeper than CNN or ABC or NBC or CBS or FOX News or Facebook ever will. Real perspective is there. We just have to find it. And read it.
Let's look at our cities. The citizens who reside there. Let's take a peek at what's happening where there are no take-out lattes from Starbucks to drink while adjusting background screens for the next video conference call.
We live in Summit County. Home of Akron, Ohio. Not a big city, but a city nonetheless. This is Akron's bloodiest summer in over a decade. The murder rate in Summit County is exponentially higher than we have seen in a very long time. So is the suicide rate. So is the rate of drug overdoses. We are not fine. This is not normal.
But what about big cities? Chicago murders are up by 50%. NYC murders are up by 50%. 36 of our country's 50 largest cities are experiencing double digit increases in murder rates and corresponding increases in violent crime overall. On average, America's largest cities all together are experiencing increases in murder alone of 24% this year. And in all of those cities, also increases in other violent crime, suicide, and drug overdoses. We are not fine. This is not normal.
Civil unrest is exploding this summer. What started out as commendable calls for justice and racial equality across the country degenerated into free-for-alls of destruction in far too many sad instances. We are not fine. This is not normal.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand why people are feeling more violent this year. Human beings are stressed to the absolute max. Maybe not in suburbia quite yet, but certainly everywhere else. Unemployment, poverty, unprecedented economic decline, insecurity of every variety, lack of available services, lack of childcare, lack of genuine human connection. Lack of any semblance of normalcy.
This is America in 2020. Our new normal.
What about other countries? How is the rest of the world doing with their new normal?
Well... 500,000 children under five years old per month are now crossing the threshold into extreme malnourishment throughout the world. Read that one more time for me. 500,000 children under five years old. Per MONTH. Are now extremely malnourished. You know, those skeleton kids with the bloated bellies who are too weak to brush the flies off their faces that we used to see on TV all the time? Yep. Those kids. Was that too graphic? I'm sorry. I'm slightly unhinged.
24,000 of those kids are expected to die of starvation before the first year of this pandemic is over. That's 24,000 children under five years old. Dead. Because they starved to death. Because their parents can't go to work. We are not fine. This is not normal.
But we don't see much about that stuff on the evening news, do we? No way.
We're too busy watching Johns Hopkins tally up the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases since February. As if the total number of confirmed infections since February is even slightly relevant. 5.6 million confirmed cases in the United States! Jesus in Heaven! Everyone stop everything. We've got something better! The new normal!
But 5.44 million of those infected citizens are alive today to tell us all about it. Why mention that? Because that's not nearly scary enough for the nightly news. Neither is the fact that 80% of the people who die from COVID-19 are over 65 years old and most have serious underlying health problems. And no, I don't think old sick people are expendable. Don't be ridiculous. But I do know that means the vast majority of able-bodied children and adults in the world are at higher risk of dying in a car accident at some point in their lives than dying of COVID-19. So shouldn't us under 65 able-bodied people get to work and help to protect the others instead of ordering more take-out sushi?
Last time I checked, 70% of the COVID-19 deaths in Ohio were nursing home residents. And Ohio isn't alone. And no, I don't think nursing home residents are expendable. Don't be ridiculous. But I do know that the median life expectancy for a nursing home resident in the United States is five months. And after five months, they die. Because we don't send healthy people to live in nursing homes. We send dying people to live in nursing homes. I'm not heartless. I'm stating an unfortunate fact.
And now the government and public health officials and the media and now a huge chunk of the country are terrified to send our kids back to school. And no, I don't think children or teachers are expendable. Don't be ridiculous. But I do know that since February, twenty-seven school-aged children have died from COVID-19 in the United States. And guess what else I know? During that same time period, fifty-one school-aged children have died from influenza. That means that the flu has been nearly twice as deadly to school-aged children as COVID-19 since February. The nightly news won't tell us that. But real perspective is there. We just have to find it. And read it.
But instead of real perspective and presentation of facts without sensationalism, we'll make a political issue out of a public health issue instead. It's election time, baby! Let's all take sides and fight like hell. In fact, let's fight about toilet paper and hand soap and cleaning supplies and the price of beef! Let's fight about spring breakers in Florida! Let's fight about masks! Let's fight about the US Postal Service! Let's fight about meat processing plants and TikTok and Facebook and Goodyear and who flew on Jeffrey Epstein's perverse airplanes! Let's all look down our noses at everyone else until we work ourselves into a complete frenzy and add a few more points to the murder rates! My God, let's have a fight right freaking now about anything and everything! This is political now. It's wartime.
Because why be reasonable? Why should we be boring when we can be sensational instead? Why work a little harder to find perspective instead of turning on the nightly news or logging into Facebook and gobbling up what the dumbest blockhead from high school just posted? Why get along when we can fight like a bunch of fools until we ruin everything for the next few generations?
Are we really this awful? This pathetic? This willfully ignorant? Jesus, I'm so freaking disgusted. This isn't normal. We are not fine.
How about we do this instead: Look around. Gain perspective. Evaluate risk. Stop fighting. Go to work. Whatever we can do to help each other. Do it. Now.
We've got a lot of work to do to fix this mess we've created on a million different fronts. Slightly unhinged or not, I'd like to start that job right now. I'm tired of the new normal. It's not normal.
I love you.
Mom
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