FILE -
Joanna
Garcia,
47,
leaves
flowers
outside
Geneva
Presbyterian
Church
to honor
victims
in
Sunday's
shooting
at the
church
in
Laguna
Woods,
Calif.,
Monday,
May 16,
2022.
After a
weekend
of gun
violence
in
America,
when
shootings
killed
and
wounded
people
grocery
shopping,
going to
church
and
simply
living
their
lives,
the
nation
marked a
milestone
of 1
million
deaths
from
COVID-19.
The
number,
once
unthinkable,
is now a
pedestrian
reality
in the
United
States,
just as
is the
reality
of the
continuing
epidemic
of gun
violence
that
kills
tens of
thousands
of
people a
year.
(AP
Photo/Jae
C. Hong,
File) |
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FILE -
This May
13, 2020
photo
made
with a
fisheye
lens
shows a
list of
the
confirmed
COVID-19
cases in
Salt
Lake
County
early in
the
coronavirus
pandemic
at the
Salt
Lake
County
Health
Department,
in Salt
Lake
City.
After a
weekend
of gun
violence
in
America,
Saturday,
May 14,
2022,
when
shootings
killed
and
wounded
people
grocery
shopping,
going to
church
and
simply
living
their
lives,
the
nation
marked a
milestone
of 1
million
deaths
from
COVID-19.
The
number,
once
unthinkable,
is now a
pedestrian
reality
in the
United
States,
just as
is the
reality
of the
continuing
epidemic
of gun
violence
that
kills
tens of
thousands
of
people a
year.
(AP
Photo/Rick
Bowmer,
File) |
|
COVID-19,
shootings:
Is mass
death
now
tolerated
in
America?
By
MICHELLE
R. SMITH
apnews.com
PROVIDENCE,
R.I. -
After
mass
shootings
killed
and
wounded
people
grocery
shopping,
going to
church
and
simply
living
their
lives
last
weekend,
the
nation
marked a
milestone
of 1
million
deaths
from
COVID-19.
The
number,
once
unthinkable,
is now
an
irreversible
reality
in the
United
States —
just
like the
persistent
reality
of gun
violence
that
kills
tens of
thousands
of
people
every
year.
Americans
have
always
tolerated
high
rates of
death
and
suffering
— among
certain
segments
of
society.
But the
sheer
numbers
of
deaths
from
preventable
causes,
and the
apparent
acceptance
that no
policy
change
is on
the
horizon,
raises
the
question:
Has mass
death
become
accepted
in
America?
“I
think
the
evidence
is
unmistakable
and
quite
clear.
We will
tolerate
an
enormous
amount
of
carnage,
suffering
and
death in
the
U.S.,
because
we have
over the
past two
years.
We have
over our
history,”
says
Gregg
Gonsalves,
an
epidemiologist
and
professor
at Yale
who,
before
that,
was a
leading
member
of the
AIDS
advocacy
group
ACT UP.
“If
I
thought
the AIDS
epidemic
was bad,
the
American
response
to
COVID-19
has sort
of ...
it’s a
form of
the
American
grotesque,
right?”
Gonsalves
says.
“Really
— a
million
people
are
dead?
And
you’re
going to
talk to
me about
your
need to
get back
to
normal,
when for
the most
part
most of
us have
been
living
pretty
reasonable
lives
for the
past six
months?”
Certain
communities
have
always
borne
the
brunt of
higher
death
rates in
the
United
States.
There
are
profound
racial
and
class
inequalities
in the
United
States,
and our
tolerance
of death
is
partly
based on
who is
at risk,
says
Elizabeth
Wrigley-Field,
a
sociology
professor
at the
University
of
Minnesota
who
studies
mortality.
“Some
people’s
deaths
matter a
lot more
than
others,”
she
laments.
“And I
think
that’s
what
we’re
seeing
in this
really
brutal
way with
this
coincidence
of
timing.”
In
Buffalo,
the
alleged
shooter
was a
racist
bent on
killing
as many
Black
people
as he
could,
according
to
authorities.
The
family
of
86-year-old
Ruth
Whitfield,
one of
10
people
killed
there in
an
attack
on a
grocery
store
that
served
the
African
American
community,
channeled
the
grief
and
frustration
of
millions
as they
demanded
action,
including
passage
of a
hate
crime
bill and
accountability
for
those
who
spread
hateful
rhetoric.
“You
expect
us to
keep
doing
this
over and
over and
over
again —
over
again,
forgive
and
forget,”
her son,
former
Buffalo
Fire
Commissioner
Garnell
Whitfield,
Jr.,
told
reporters.
“While
people
we elect
and
trust in
offices
around
this
country
do their
best not
to
protect
us, not
to
consider
us
equal.”
That
sense —
that
politicians
have
done
little
even as
the
violence
repeats
itself –
is
shared
by many
Americans.
It’s a
dynamic
that’s
encapsulated
by the
“thoughts
and
prayers”
offered
to
victims
of gun
violence
by
politicians
unwilling
to make
meaningful
commitments
to
ensure
there
really
is no
more
“never
again,”
according
to
Martha
Lincoln,
an
anthropology
professor
at San
Francisco
State
University
who
studies
the
cultural
politics
of
public
health.
“I
don’t
think
that
most
Americans
feel
good
about
it. I
think
most
Americans
would
like to
see real
action
from
their
leaders
in the
culture
about
these
pervasive
issues,”
says
Lincoln,
who adds
that
there is
a
similar
“political
vacuum”
around
COVID-19.
The
high
numbers
of
deaths
from
COVID-19,
guns and
other
causes
are
difficult
to
fathom
and can
start to
feel
like
background
noise,
disconnected
from the
individuals
whose
lives
were
lost and
the
families
whose
lives
were
forever
altered.
With
COVID-19,
American
society
has even
come to
accept
the
deaths
of
children
from a
preventable
cause.
In a
recent
guest
column
published
in The
Advocate
newspaper,
pediatrician
Dr. Mark
W. Kline
pointed
out that
more
than
1,500
children
have
died
from
COVID-19,
according
to the
U.S.
Centers
for
Disease
Control
and
Prevention,
despite
the
“myth”
that it
is
harmless
for
children.
Kline
wrote
that
there
was a
time in
pediatrics
when
“children
were not
supposed
to die.”
“There
was no
acceptable
pediatric
body
count,”
he
wrote.
“At
least,
not
before
the
first
pandemic
of the
social
media
age,
COVID-19,
changed
everything.”
There
are many
parallels
between
the U.S.
response
to
COVID-19
and its
response
to the
gun
violence
epidemic,
says
Sonali
Rajan, a
professor
at
Columbia
University
who
researches
school
violence.
“We
have
long
normalized
mass
death in
this
country.
Gun
violence
has
persisted
as a
public
health
crisis
for
decades,”
she
says,
noting
that an
estimated
100,000
people
are shot
every
year and
some
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
lockdown
drills
at
school.
And in
about
half the
states,
Rajan
says,
teachers
are
allowed
to carry
firearms.
When
she
looks at
the
current
response
to
COVID-19,
she sees
similar
dynamics.
Americans,
she
says,
“deserve
to be
able to
commute
to work
without
getting
sick, or
work
somewhere
without
getting
sick, or
send
their
kids to
school
without
them
getting
sick.”
“What
will
happen
down the
line if
more and
more
people
get sick
and are
disabled?”
she
asks.
“What
happens?
Do we
just
kind of
live
like
this for
the
foreseeable
future?”
It’s
important,
she
says, to
ask what
policies
are
being
put
forth by
elected
officials
who have
the
power to
“attend
to the
health
and the
well-being
of their
constituents.”
“It’s
remarkable
how that
responsibility
has been
sort of
abdicated,
is how I
would
describe
it,”
Rajan
says.
The
level of
concern
about
deaths
often
depends
on
context,
says
Rajiv
Sethi,
an
economics
professor
at
Barnard
College
who has
written
about
both gun
violence
and
COVID-19.
He
points
to a
rare but
dramatic
event
such as
an
airplane
crash or
an
accident
at a
nuclear
power
plant,
which do
seem to
matter
to
people.
By
contrast,
something
like
traffic
deaths
gets
less
attention.
The
government
this
week
said
that
nearly
43,000
people
had died
on the
nation’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
gotten a
lot of
attention,
but mass
shootings
represent
a small
number
of the
gun
deaths
that
happen
in the
United
States
every
year,
Sethi
says.
For
example,
there
are more
suicides
from
guns in
America
than
there
are
homicides,
an
estimated
24,000
gun
suicides
compared
with
19,000
homicides.
But even
though
there
are
policy
proposals
that
could
help
within
the
bounds
of the
Second
Amendment,
he says,
the
debate
on guns
is
politically
entrenched.
“The
result
is that
nothing
is
done,”
Sethi
says.
“The
result
is
paralysis.”
Dr.
Megan
Ranney
of Brown
University’s
School
of
Public
Health
calls it
a
frustrating
“learned
helplessness.”
“There’s
been
almost a
sustained
narrative
created
by some
that
tells
people
that
these
things
are
inevitable,”
says
Ranney,
an ER
doctor
who did
gun
violence
research
before
COVID-19
hit. “It
divides
us when
people
think
that
there’s
nothing
they can
do.”
She
wonders
if
people
really
understand
the
sheer
numbers
of
people
dying
from
guns,
from
COVID-19
and from
opioids.
The CDC
said
this
month
that
more
than
107,000
Americans
died of
drug
overdoses
in 2021,
setting
a
record.
Ranney
also
points
to false
narratives
spread
by bad
actors,
such as
denying
that the
deaths
were
preventable,
or
suggesting
those
who die
deserved
it.
There is
an
emphasis
in the
United
States
on
individual
responsibility
for
one’s
health,
Ranney
says —
and a
tension
between
the
individual
and the
community.
“It’s
not that
we put
less
value on
an
individual
life,
but
rather
we’re
coming
up
against
the
limits
of that
approach,”
she
says.
“Because
the
truth
is, is
that any
individual’s
life,
any
individual’s
death or
disability,
actually
affects
the
larger
community.”
Similar
debates
happened
in the
last
century
about
child
labor
laws,
worker
protections
and
reproductive
rights,
Ranney
says.
An
understanding
of
history
is
important,
says
Wrigley-Field,
who
teaches
the
history
of ACT
UP in
one of
her
classes.
During
the AIDS
crisis
in the
1980s,
the
White
House
press
secretary
made
anti-gay
jokes
when
asked
about
AIDS,
and
everyone
in the
room
laughed.
Activists
were
able to
mobilize
a mass
movement
that
forced
people
to
change
the way
they
thought
and
forced
politicians
to
change
the way
they
operated,
she
says.
“I
don’t
think
that
those
things
are off
the
table
now.
It’s
just
that
it’s not
really
clear if
they’re
going to
emerge,”
Wrigley-Field
says. “I
don’t
think
giving
up is a
permanent
state of
affairs.
But I do
think
that’s
where
we’re
at,
right at
this
moment.”
___
Michelle
R. Smith
is an
Associated
Press
reporter,
based in
Providence.
Follow
her on
Twitter
at
twitter.com/mrsmithap
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