PROVIDENCE, RI (AP) – After mass shootings, killed and injured people shopping for groceries, going to church and just living their lives last weekend, the nation marked a milestone of 1 million deaths from COVID-19. The numbers, once unthinkable, are now an irreversible reality in the United States – just like the constant reality of gun violence, which kills tens of thousands of people every year.
Americans have always tolerated high levels of death and suffering – among certain segments of society. But the sheer number of deaths from preventable causes and the apparent acceptance that there is no change in policy on the horizon raises the question: Is mass deaths accepted in America?
“I think the evidence is infallible and very clear. We will tolerate a huge amount of carnage, suffering and death in the United States because we have had it for the last two years. We have over our history, “said Greg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist and professor at Yale who was previously a leading member of the ACT UP AIDS Advocacy Group.
“If I thought the AIDS epidemic was bad, the American response to COVID-19 is something like … it’s a form of American grotesque, isn’t it?” Gonsalves says. “Really – a million people are dead? And will you talk to me about your need to get back to normal, when for the most part most of us have been living a pretty sensible life for the last six months?
Some communities have always borne the brunt of higher mortality rates in the United States. There are deep racial and class inequalities in the United States, and our tolerance of death is based in part on who is at risk, said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota who studies mortality.
“The death of some people is much more important than others,” she complains. “And I think that’s what we see in this really brutal way with this coincidence of time.”
In Buffalo, the alleged shooter was a racist set to kill as many black people as possible, according to authorities. The family of 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, one of 10 people killed in an attack on a grocery store serving the African-American community, has drawn the grief and frustration of millions as they called for action, including passing a hate crime bill. and responsibility for those who spread hateful rhetoric.
“You expect us to keep doing this over and over and over again – forgive and forget,” her son, former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield Jr., told reporters. “While the people we elect and trust in the offices in this country are doing everything possible not to protect us, not to consider us equal.
This feeling – that politicians have done little, even when violence is repeated – is shared by many Americans. This is a dynamic encapsulated by the “thoughts and prayers” offered to victims of gun violence by politicians who are reluctant to make meaningful commitments to ensure that there is really no “never again”, according to Martha Lincoln, a professor. in Anthropology at San Francisco State University. who studies cultural policy of public health.
“I do not think most Americans feel good about it. “I think most Americans would like to see real action from their cultural leaders on these widespread issues,” said Lincoln, who added that there was a similar “political vacuum” around COVID-19.
The large number of deaths from COVID-19, weapons and other causes is difficult to understand and may begin to feel like a background noise turned off by people whose lives have been lost and families whose lives have been changed forever.
With COVID-19, American society even accepted the death of children for preventable reasons. In a recent guest column published in The Advocate, pediatrician Dr. Mark W. Klein said more than 1,500 children had died from COVID-19, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite “myths” that it was harmless to children. Klein writes that there was a time in pediatrics when “children should not have died.”
“There was no acceptable number of children’s bodies,” he wrote. “At least not before the first pandemic of the social media era, COVID-19, changed everything.
There are many parallels between the US response to COVID-19 and its response to the gun violence epidemic, said Sonali Rajan, a professor at Columbia University who studies school violence.
“We have long since normalized mass deaths in this country. “Gun violence has been a public health crisis for decades,” she said, noting that approximately 100,000 people are shot each year and about 40,000 will die.
Gun violence is such a part of life in America now that we organize our lives around its inevitability. Children do blocking exercises at school. And in about half of the states, Rajan says, teachers have the right to carry firearms.
When looking at the current response to COVID-19, it sees similar dynamics. Americans, she says, “deserve to be able to travel to work without getting sick, or work somewhere without getting sick, or send their children to school without getting sick.”
“What will happen in the future if more and more people get sick and disabled?” She asks. “What’s going on? Is that just how we live in the foreseeable future?”
It is important, she says, to ask what policies are put forward by elected officials who have the power to “take care of the health and well-being of their constituents.”
“It’s remarkable how this responsibility has abdicated, that’s how I would describe it,” Rajan said.
The level of concern about deaths often depends on the context, said Rajiv Seti, a professor of economics at Barnard College who has written on both gun violence and COVID-19. He points to a rare but dramatic event such as a plane crash or an accident at a nuclear power plant that seems to matter to people.
In contrast, something like trafficking deaths receives less attention. The government said this week that nearly 43,000 people died on the country’s roads last year, the highest level in 16 years. The federal government unveiled a national strategy earlier this year to combat the problem.
Even when talking about gun violence, the Buffalo shooting has garnered a lot of attention, but mass shootings account for a small number of gun deaths that occur in the United States each year, Sethi said. For example, in America there are more suicides from guns than murders, approximately 24,000 suicides with guns compared to 19,000 murders. But while there are political proposals that could help in the Second Amendment, he said, the arms debate has been politically strengthened.
“The result is that nothing is being done,” Sethi said. “The result is paralysis.”
Dr. Megan Rani of Brown University’s School of Public Health called it a disappointing “learned helplessness.”
“There’s an almost long story created by some that tells people that these things are inevitable,” said Rani, an emergency room doctor who conducted a study of gun violence before hitting COVID-19. “It divides us when people think there is nothing they can do.
She wonders if people really understand the sheer number of people dying from guns, COVID-19 and opioids. The CDC announced this month that more than 107,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2021, setting a record.
Rani also cites fake stories spread by bad actors, such as denying that deaths were preventable or assuming that those who die deserve it. In the United States, there is an emphasis on individual responsibility for health, Rani says – and tensions between the individual and the community.
“It’s not that we give less value to individual life, but rather we face the limits of this approach,” she said. “Because the truth is that the life of each individual, the death or injury of each individual actually affects the larger community.
Similar debates have taken place in the last century over child labor laws, worker protection and reproductive rights, Rani said.
Understanding history is important, says Wrigley-Field, who teaches ACT UP history in one of her classes. During the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, the White House spokesman made anti-gay jokes when asked about AIDS, and everyone in the room laughed. Activists have managed to mobilize a mass movement that has forced people to change the way they think and forced politicians to change the way they work, she said.
“I do not think these things are out of the table now. It’s just not very clear if they will show up, “said Wrigley Field. “I do not think that refusal is a permanent state of affairs. But I think we’re in this place right now. “
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Michelle R. Smith is an Associated Press reporter based in Providence. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/mrsmithap
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