Written By: Robert D. Sollars
The virus is killing us! it’s killing us! Whada we do? Whada we do? Pandemic is here and…Oh Mah Gawd, Oh Mah Gawd…the sky is falling, the sky is falling. We’re all gonna DIE! We’re ALL GONNA DIE!
This is basically the news we get every single day, from virtually every news source, talking head, and politician in the country. Unfortunately, all hysteria just feeds into the panic that we feel about the virus and raise the anxiety and stress levels in most people. Some people, like me, could care less and take the precautions that we can, I’m a hermit anyway so… But it’s not only stress and anxiety that this hyper-panic leads too.
We’re basically, even being told by public health commercials, stay at home. Punitive laws have been declared in certain states. Everyone is so scared of this bug that it’s hindering the economy and scaring people to death, but they’ll die alone in a hospital bed.
Then we come to the greater effects of this stress and anxiety, the security reasonings that everyone is ignoring because of the virus. There are the waves of domestic violence that have wracked the country, and the many pandemics we’ve encountered in the past…without 24-second news coverage.
Let’s take a look at a few of those items, to the best of my ability and knowledge of the effects on everyone’s safety, security, and mental health from trauma;
Stay-at-Home Orders:
Seems like we’re all under house arrest, despite the fact we can exercise and walk the dog, in most states, grocery shop, and go to restaurants. No, it’s not a full quarantine or stay-at-home order, but when you can’t get out and do anything or go anywhere important to you…you might as well be under arrest and not able to leave your 6 X 9 cell.
Adding to that are those who may be mentally fragile and ready to break or having anger issues boiling over without a way to counter-act it…being isolated from society, isn’t good. Yes, you can always talk on the phone, e-mail, text, &, etc. but it’s just not the same as being cuddled and held in a comforting way by someone you love. Words, and close human contact, can only take so much loneliness away.
Punitive Laws:
California highway patrol/police are stopping people in the cars to ensure they have legitimate reasons for being out and aren’t violating the most restrictive stay-at-home orders in the country, it hasn’t helped them much. A few states have authorized police officers to issue tickets to those people who don’t wear masks, and businesses in those states have been known to restrict people without masks from entering, Arizona is one of them.
There are other states that are fining and/or docking people for not wearing masks, walking the dogs, not observing curfews, and generally being humans. It sometimes sounds like a dystopian view of the world by Kurt Vonnegut!
Pandemics from the past
Without the 24-second news cycle, or should I shorten that to 2.4 seconds, it is inevitable that people have begun to panic and have hysteria about this damnable thing? Has everyone forgotten about the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918 – 1920? More than 22 MILLION people died from it and easily 20 times that many were infected worldwide. In the United States, we have more than 80,000 people a year die because of the flu and more than 4 million infected…or have we become accustomed to that…eh, old news, no big deal, we’re in such a panic we gotta have hysteria. Remember the media motto for the past 4 decades… ”If it bleeds, it leads.”
We are so upset over this virus, we keep forgetting that there have been worse periods in American culture than this…and, the horror of it all…WE SURVIVED! The economic collapse of 2008, 9/11, WWII, 1929, The Spanish Flu, 1862 (when more Americans died as a result of the Civil War in one year than will from this virus), and so on.
Domestic violence (DV)
Because of the stay-at-home orders, we are seeing an epidemic of domestic violence in this country, but no one is even worried about it. More people are injured by DV than by this pandemic. Abusers are forced to stay at home. Victims are expected to stay at home. Everyone is at home…with their delusional fears, anger, & other issues. Does putting them into stay-at-home 24/7 really help the situation?
I’ve seen innumerable reports over the past few months of DV being on the increase exponentially with significant others and children. What do people expect when you’re cloistered with others you like to beat on? A police Commander of 31 years, scheduled for retirement in May 2020, was shot and killed by a 22-year-old who was upset at his roommates due to the quarantine.
Child Abuse
When children began going back to school in the fall of 2020, there was an explosion of child abuse cases that were reported across the country…roughly 200% increase from the previous school year 2019 – 2020. Do those of you who are rising the hysteria over the virus even hearing those statistics? Children are the least likely to contract the virus and the least likely to die from it.
Of all the virus cases in the country, only 25,000 cases were for children below the age of 18. The death rate for those children? Less than 0.04%! That means that children have the lowest rate of infection and death for any age group in the country.
Yet we subject them to stay-at-home orders and tell them that they MUST learn from home, whether it’s good for them or not. Children, in a report from Johns Hopkins, are staying in front of the computer screen as many as 9 hours a day. Just a few years ago we were complaining that they were spending too much time at 4 hours a day in front of it.
Studies have also shown that these children are falling behind exponentially, by at least 1-grade level while learning at home. Suicide rates are up nearly 150% with this and they aren’t learning…they’re playing games, talking behind the teacher’s back, and doing other disruptive behaviors that don’t allow them to learn. We’re turning out a nation of idiots because of it.
Shelter in place
An overused term. It used to mean an active shooter, natural disaster, or some other tragedy. It also stood for, literally, stay where you’re at & no going ANYWHERE. Not even going to the pharmacy, stores, or the restroom, literally no nothing…unless mandated and approved by the government.
Overall Crime
Local police departments across the country, from Seattle to Miami are reporting that violent crime is up and will remain up during this period. Seattle showed a remarkable 61% increase in its homicide rate. Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Miami, and even Phoenix, has shown numbers rocketing to record highs. This for everything, from car theft, shoplifting, assault, murder, and drugs.
So, what do all these numbers and, my, hysteria mean? It means that when the kids are back in school and everybody is back to work, the number of WPV/SV numbers will be going through the roof. Why do I say that?
- Kids have a tendency to forget what they’ve learned over the summer…this will translate to forgetting how-to socially interact and violence will rise precipitously, from fistfights to shootings and worse.
- Employees will be back at work and trying to learn, again, what is appropriate for the workplace and what isn’t. At home, they can swear a blue streak and be as sexist or racist as they want. They can’t do that in a real-world environment.
Do I believe that this is totally and completely overblown and media-driven? Yes, I do. Why do I say this? Because if the media were truly driven by the truth and not wanting to hype the hysteria, they would recite the statistics from above, and work to even out the reporting. They constantly report only the bad news and near anything else but the bad news…except fluff pieces which do most of us no good at all.
I understand that their many, many more that believe it to be the greatest threat to civilization since Hiroshima. They believe that because of what they’ve been spooned fed to believe, not the actual truth but the truth as they are told to believe in the truth. As I’ve said several times this past year, where is Walter Cronkite, Jessica Savitch, Barbara Walters, and Harry Reasoner? They told the truth with no sugar coating or slanting for political purposes.
Am I worried about the virus? In some ways yes, I have a lot of underlying health conditions; kidney transplant, diabetes, enlarged heart, intestinal issues, not to mention cancer, and blindness. But to be perfectly honest with you, with no sugar coating, I’m much more worried about the psychological trauma, death, and injuries that will ensue when we get this resolved. My issues will become small potatoes when the death rate begins to go up exponentially because of it and the trauma lasts for lifetimes.
Want to tell me I’m wrong? Write me with the arguments you’ve got and we’ll talk
It happens to Anyone…Any Time… Anywhere… For any Reason
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Copyright 2021 Robert D. Sollars
