Writing off Death

Hans Holbein’s Dance of Death (1523–5)

(5 minute read) 

Conservative Republican Evangelical Messaging:

            People die.

            People are dying all the time anyway.

            People die from heart disease, cancer, regular disease, accidents, mayhem of all sorts, old age, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, food poisoning and just because. Covid-19 is just something else that people are dying from. Not that big of a deal really. Sure it’s bad but so is heart disease.

Thoughts and prayers.

Perspective.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has been horrible. No disputing that. However, I grow weary of the daily scorecards of 2020 deaths attributed to Covid that make perspective difficult. Consider these CDC stats on causes of death during 2018…”

 Wearisome.

            I lifted the above quote from a meme that has been circulating around in conservative postings. I have seen it posted and shared in a number of places. I haven’t bothered checking the information presented as to having the correct number of deaths attributed to various categories.

            Hearing about Covid deaths is “wearisome” to them. People share those feelings in order to minimize what’s taking place. That way they can ignore the fact that the President knew SARS-CoV-2 was deadly and lied to the nation. They can ignore that he has and still does encourage practices that kill people. He got it and lived. Now he’s a one man super-spreading show.

            At the top of the list is 655,381 people dying from heart disease. Then the author talks about all the other ways people die and supplies the number for each. So really, is adding an additional half million to the normal death tally really all that much of a big deal? The majority of these new deaths are going to be old people and they don’t have all that many years left anyway. Sure there’ll be some people die from all the other age groups and ethnicities but that’s bound to happen. They’re…

Just collateral damage.

Revealed

            What’s missing from the “perspective” narrative? (Besides humanity.)

• A shattered economy.
• The millions that will have their physical lives forever compromised from Covid-19.
• The millions of people that have been put out of work. This is in addition to the 30 million plus that were living in poverty before the pandemic struck.
• All the families that have lost BOTH parents to Covid-19.
• Millions more now without health insurance during a pandemic.
• Homes lost.
• Men, women and children hungry, some for the first time in their lives.
• All those that have lost EVERYTHING!

Wearisome.

292,747

            Clearly they needed this “perspective” during WWII.

            Why?

            The number of deaths due to Covid-19 has now exceeded the number of American combat casualties from WWII. (292,747) That took almost 4 years. When casualties were reported from the front lines people weren’t saying that they were tired of hearing about dead people and that it was wearisome. There weren’t irrational individuals walking neighborhoods or calling people up telling them to maintain their perspective that there were worse things than our men and women dying in combat.

            AND that’s only .39% of the total population then. Yet people made a big deal out of it.

            The “conservative” Retrumplicans and evangelicals of today are cut from a different cloth.

            Retrumplicans made it possible to exceed that total in less than a year! AND we’re coming in at a 1.5% or higher mortality rate!

Winning!

405,399

            That’s the number of total American deaths from WWII. Armed forces personnel were dying from natural causes, accidents, etc. then as well. (Yes, people died from other things then too. Amazing isn’t it?) Retrumplicans will make it possible to beat this number as well!

More winning!

 Caring and sharing.

            It’s easy to see why keeping things in perspective is difficult for some people. (NOT really.)  I read that what the pandemic has also done is revealed the true nature of people. The callous disregard for human life by so many has been a real eye-opening experience all over the country.

            How many deaths and lives destroyed will it take to provide adequate perspective to Conservative Evangelical Republican Trump supporters? How many have to die before they go against their lying Ducé and start wearing masks, participating in contact tracing and get vaccinated? What has to happen to get any of them to stop killing people? Their refusal to believe what’s happening, mask up and maintain physical distancing has resulted in a couple of hundred thousand needless deaths. That is NOT the fault of the Chinese that they like to race bait. Conservative Republicans, Evangelicals and Trump supporters are the ones responsible.

They own that.