I’ve been going through it
TW: Death, suicide, mass shootings, police brutality, human trafficking
I’m tired of this pandemic.
It’s been a tough and long year. And I’ve been blessed. I’ve been safe, securely housed, fed, I have student loans, so I’m not struggling financially, and I’m vaccinated. And yet, I am so drained.
I’m worn out from man-made problems that are causing millions of people to suffer. No, not the virus, but how we’re choosing to deal with it. I hate our country’s polarized response to the pandemic and am even more upset that innocent people, especially minorities, are suffering and dying because of other people’s careless and selfish decisions.
Sure, nearly 20 percent of Americans have gotten the COVID vaccine, but depression, anxiety, addiction, PTSD, and suicide have already been on the rise from prolonged stress, isolation, and the devastating loss of loved ones. I’m talking about the long game. With studies suggesting a link between COVID infections and subsequent mental health & neurological conditions, the mental health pandemic is just upon us.
As a medical student, I’m already feeling defeated. How can medicine heal our society when our country’s political and social environment is not conducive to healing? I cannot even begin to imagine how frontline medical providers are holding up with all the trauma they’re facing. The data shows that they are not okay. Nearly 1 in 4 doctors knows a physician who’s committed suicide. Physician burnout and mental health problems were already high before COVID. After this pandemic, we’re not only at risk of exacerbating our national physician shortage, but we also risk losing these amazing people to suicide and mental health illness. We cannot afford to let this happen!
Every time states prematurely relax restrictions and people begin to return to business as usual, we keep experiencing unprecedented COVID spikes like the one in 5 states that accounted for 44% of the COVID-19 cases in the U.S. between March 29 — April 4. We’re not only putting a strain on our healthcare system but also the health and well-being of our healthcare providers who are running on empty. We may be tired of COVID, but unless we remain vigilant and take some sort of precautionary measure (vaccination, wearing PPE, and/or handwashing), things are not going to change any time soon.
Note to all healthcare workers: Thank you for your sacrifices. Stay strong, take care of yourself and reach out to your loved ones for the support! Please don’t hesitate to talk to a trained professional. You can’t keep caring for us if you’re not well.
A lot of our suffering comes from hopelessness or apathy. We sit and watch the news and see all the terrible things that are happening worldwide, but we are not given the tools to do anything about it. We feel helpless. We can’t make things right so we either stop caring as a form of self-preservation (albeit selfish if you asked me) or we internalize all the bad things in the world, like we’re responsible for it, effectively crippling ourselves with anxiety. Either way, inaction becomes our trained behavioral response. We have to realize that our inaction is exacerbating our suffering by creating a society where everyone is only concerned about their own wellness. We need to do a better job advocating for those who are ̶v̶u̶l̶n̶e̶r̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ exploited.
According to a recent study, an estimated 40,000 U.S. children lost a parent to COVID. That means 40k children are going to grow up in a single-parent home or a foster home. Not only are these kids traumatized at such a young age by this loss, but they’re forced to live in economic insecurity in the aftermath of their parent’s death. In the US, this is a heavy sentence to carry out.
But it’s not only children who lost a parent to COVID we have to worry about. The Centers for Disease Control reported that 25 percent of young adults considered suicide during the lockdowns, while overall mental health and suicide rates appear to have spiked as well.
Although the number of all U.S. suicides fell nearly 6% last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported preliminary data that 88,295 people died from a drug overdose in the months between August 2019 and 2020, marking a 27% increase over the previous year. The surprising reduction in suicide rate could be due to underestimation of suicides by drug overdose if they were classified as an unintentional drug overdose. Regardless, the combined number of people dying in the U.S. from suicide and drug overdose is unacceptable. We have to come together as a country to create compassionate solutions for the problems that are plaguing our society.
As this country plans to establish a “new normal,” I hope the blueprint prioritizes increasing mental health resources and access. Teachers cannot be educators and personal therapists to every child who’s hurting right now. They’re already doing way more than we can ever ask of them. Our government MUST provide funding to schools so they can hire trained professionals to support our students AND teachers. We can’t continue to keep failing our children. The health of our future and our democracy depends on it.
While we’re on the topic of children’s safety, we have to address the growing number of children who become victims of human trafficking. Sadly, even this pandemic has resulted in an increase in the prevalence of human trafficking in the U.S. These are kids who are failed by a system that was meant to protect them and further traumatized by adults who take advantage of them. We fail to realize that every time we’re neglecting a child who needs guidance or a second chance, we’re forcing them to endure trauma and hardships.
Without good influences around them, they’re exploited and become vulnerable to drug use, incarceration, and premature death. This is one of the many reasons why on a given day, there is nearly 60,000 youth under age 18 are incarcerated in juvenile jails and prisons in the United States. But instead of helping these kids from the forefront, the prison industrial complex capitalizes on their suffering while subjecting them to the company of other criminals with the intention of securing ̶r̶e̶p̶e̶a̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶e̶n̶d̶e̶r̶s̶ ̶ free labor. If we’re going to effectively prevent crime in our ailing society, we have to provide young people the guidance and resources to succeed in life, especially if they’re not receiving it from their own family.
We have to realize that the wealth of a country means nothing if the people living in the country can’t enjoy a decent life and feel safe. How can we evade other countries to ‘prevent terrorists from attacking us here in the U.S,’ but normalize having mass shootings (133 as of April 9 in 2021) and police violence as an acceptable consequence of our daily life? It’s disrespectful to the servicemen and women who sacrificed their lives and mental health to protect us from foreign threats, for us to be destroying our country from within. I know there are political talking points on both sides, but we have to drop them and focus on securing the U.S. from domestic threats.
I’ve bet you’ve heard someone say something along the lines of, “X happened to me, and I turned out okay, therefore X is not harmful.” Were all so used to being screwed over or having to endure hardships, that we normalize screwing other people over or minimizing other people’s struggles, as almost a rite of passage. We have a hard time empathizing with others because we’re always listening to compare instead of trying to understand their perspectives. Whether we want to admit it or not, the extent of our rugged individualism is incompatible with sustaining a healthy and functional society.
Amy Chua attempts to characterize the political tribalism of white voters who voted for Trump in 2016, as a consequence of justified fears of “white Americans who are faced with the prospect of becoming a minority in their own country.” But this is far from the truth. While there has been a push for increased diversity and representation in the media, very little has changed to bridge the economic and health racial disparities that exist in this county. She practically writes an ‘Oppression Olympics’ book (I just read the essay) in defense of white people while criticizing the left and progressives for employing similar divisive politics. While she’s hypocritically right about the divisiveness, both sides are fueling this fire.
Since we live in racially and ideologically segregated communities here in the U.S, corporations, politicians, movies (Hollywood), social media (FB) and the news frequently sow seeds of discontent and divisions on the basis of differences in our identity. (Leave it to capitalism to exploit something radical like identity politics for-profits.) Using stereotypical depictions and biased representations, they create fictional or sensationalized headlines to brainwash us to fear each other. They create the conditions of our oppression while scapegoating other groups for our suffering. This is why we’re so hesitant to form a community among those who are different from us. Fear is engrained.
The same people who are exploiting all of us, are teaching us to hate one another so that we don’t realize we have the same oppressor. They’ve successfully pitted us against each other because if we’re divided, we’re collectively hopeless. Unless we can come together, humanize one another, and share our common struggles, we can never organize collective action around the issues that are affecting all of our lives. The premise of identity politics isn’t inherently divisive, but the word has been given a new neoliberal meaning that corporations and politicians are exploiting.
For instance, after Republicans lost Georgia in the 2020 presidential election and the state’s two Senate seats to Democrats, Republicans in Atlanta passed a voter suppression law to limit ballot access. When Coca-Cola and Delta spoke out against it and the Major League Baseball moved the All-Star Game from the state in response, Mitch McConnell became outraged and wrote, “Corporations will invite serious consequences if they become a vehicle for far-left mobs to hijack our country from outside the constitutional order.” Quite an ironic thing to hear from a politician whose career has been propelled by donations from corporations/individuals who’ve already hijacked our democracy.
We’ve also seen different companies like Coke take a stand in support of social justice and the BLM movement. While many might see this as progress, and while white people may feel threatened by these “signs of societal change”, as Amy Chau describes, it’s just a very well-calculated PR move. These corporations are funding both sides of the political debate. We have to realize that they’re funding our oppression and pretending to liberate us with donations and empty gestures. How can corporations be ‘woke’ if they’re funding candidates who are blatantly neglecting our needs and eroding our democracy? THEY’RE NOT. They’re just making a calculated move to take a public stance on divisive issues that will garner engagement from both sides. After all, to them, all publicity is good publicity. And if things backfire, you better believe they’ll go back on their word.
These corporations know what gets us going. They know the buzz words and clickbait headlines that get our attention and invoke emotions. Netflix’s, The Social Dilemma explains how corporations and social media sites use algorithms that encourage addiction to their platforms and enhances their analytics, which helps them improve targeted advertisements. With all our data, these corporations know our Achilles heel and they’ve been using it to drive Americans apart and hijack our elections. And it’s not just our politicians and corporations, foreign states like Russia have been employing similar tactics to destabilize our democracy. We need to realize that we’re being brainwashed to adopt exploitative behavior towards each other.
We’re so used to suffering in this country that the thought of our government helping its people during a pandemic is seen as an adoption of communism or socialism. At some point, we have to realize that our lives are inexplicably connected. For America to be okay, we have to commit to taking care of one another. Healthcare providers can’t heal a society that’s denying being sick. We can’t overcome COVID or the other problem that plagues our society unless we come together as a nation and acknowledge them. We can no longer approach things with apathy or moral injury. We have to create a community with one another and learn to work together to create a more perfect union.
I’m tired of emails trying to find me well. I am NOT well. This county is NOT well. None of us are with all the suffering we’re enduring and normalizing as a society.
We are NOT okay, and our society is a reflection of this fact.
We must first acknowledge this. Then, we need to address the issues and work towards becoming okay. Because my perfect democracy doesn’t include daily mass shootings.
I came here for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness and I want to work together to make these unalienable rights, a reality in our daily life. “It’s hard to be a human,” so let’s do our part to take care of each other.
