Pandemic Causing People to Lose Their Minds — and Grace Is the First Casualty

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Surge Summary: An indignant tweeter goes after those who continue to interact with loved ones during the COVID-19 health scare. Her attitudes reflect a pernicious, and spreading, side-effect of pandemic hysteria.

Scores of multitudes have perished from the coronavirus over the last year. As a result of the pandemic, businesses have been shuttered, millions of jobs been lost, people’s finances wiped out. Depression and suicides are skyrocketing. Columnist Peter Heck sounds the alarm about another of the contagion’s casualty that isn’t getting much attention: the collapse of basic decency toward one another in human-to-human interactions.

Heck’s admiration for medical personnel’s sacrificial service during the early stages of the conronaviurs pandemic has caused him to conclude he “would never look at doctors, nurses, and health care professionals the same way again.” But a concern has arisen in his heart:

I still believe that our healthcare workers represent “the embodiment of self-sacrificial American heroes.” But I am also convinced that such widespread public appreciation can and will be completely undone by any continued uncharitable, spiteful, and illogical messaging like this:

Just held a persons hand as they died alone, without their family or loved ones by their side. Glad you enjoyed your meal. https://t.co/L4FrRUnIdx pic.twitter.com/RWkBELdRXA

— Joanna ? (@joanna_louise0) November 30, 2020

Indeed, Heck’s not anywhere near as impressed with people like tweeter “Joanna”, who identifies herself as a “Cardio-Thoracic Intensive Care nurse”:

1. We have to assume that she is telling the truth – that she actually did just hold the hand of a dying patient.

2. We have to assume that the patient was dying because of COVID-19.

3. We have to assume that the patient contracted COVID-19 due to the irresponsibility of a family gathering.

4. We have to assume that the patient would not have contracted COVID-19 in any other manner besides contact originating with a family gathering.

5. We have to assume that Mr. Fox is in favor of policies barring family from hospital rooms to comfort their own loved ones in their final moments.

Most of those assumptions simply defy common sense. …

The pundit objects to the “bad faith” Joanna’s “unjustified attack” demonstrates.

To use the tragic death of another human being to gain internet clout, or to exhibit a sense of your moral superiority is uniquely pitiful.

The presumption that there is but one “moral” approach to dealing with the spread of coronavirus is a demonstration of extraordinary arrogance.

Was it irresponsible and selfish for Mr. Fox to gather with his loved ones? … [W]hat if one of Mr. Fox’s loved ones, say his brother, dies next week in an automobile accident? Would Joanna still argue he should have been deprived those few moments of laughter and fellowship with a brother that he will never see again?

I remember witnessing so many comments from Joanna-like characters online when Disney World was reopening several months ago: …Shaming a family for wanting to make memories together while their children are still young, judging a single mom from taking her little boy with leukemia to meet Mickey Mouse, defaming a Magic Kingdom custodian for returning to his “non-essential job” to make the money he needs to raise his orphaned grandson, all because you think they could potentially catch and spread a virus that has a 99.97% survival rate? That is both morally offensive and indefensible.

… With the news coming out of Japan that more died of lockdown-fueled suicides last month than have died all year from COVID, how long will we continue abiding the flagrantly false narrative that caring about people means supporting policies that isolate us from one another?

Heck poses some probing questions the COVID-obsessed social-distancing arbiters need to answer — if they’re even able to answer them beyond their moralistic huffing, that is:

[W]here do we draw the line for this kind of thinking? Every flu season people die because others, who did not wear a mask and socially distance, sneeze in public. Will we need to begin shaming them as well? Or since the number of people who die from seasonal flu is much smaller than those dying from COVID-19, do those victims not matter to us as much? … How can we justify ever coming back into regular contact with one another if doing so endangers someone’s life somewhere?

… Are we to believe that those recommendations from authorities are actually what is best for all people, in all places? How many examples of those authorities violating their own recommendations do we need before we learn to offer a little grace to other people?

Call me crazy, but I’d argue it’s that very haughtiness and pride – the kind embodied in Joanna’s mean-spirited, self-exalting tweet – that represents our gravest threat these days.

Read Peter Heck’s full article here.

The views here are those of the author and not necessarily Daily Surge

H/T: Disrn

Image: Adapted from: John Hain’s picture on Pixabay .