American Genocide?

Someone please explain to me how inhibiting our access to medical information that can save or endanger our lives is not genocide. When the leader of a “free world” doesn’t like the numbers, so he orders that hospitals stop reporting them, and start using a different system, that will produce numbers he likes. This sounds eerily similar to a proclamation previously made that the reason our numbers are so high is because we keep testing. “So I said to them, slow down the testing!”

https://apple.news/AqitIgLzVRnuFLvKx2FCUEA

I literally plan my level of protection based on the numbers being rolled out. Now I can’t even trust that. It’s one thing to stand on your “stage” and contradict all science and medicine for political gain. It’s quite another to prevent scientists and medical professionals from reaching your constituents, thereby necessarily expediting their deaths, if not facilitating or causing them to begin with. If a doctor makes such a negligent move, he or she can be sued for medical negligence. If a store does something irresponsible that causes medical damage, up to and including death, they can be sued for negligence.

But the President of the United States can intentionally impede the distribution of medical records and knowledge to an entire country, contributing to and or causing the deaths of many, many Americans, and that’s just… What? What do you call that? Politics? Government? What is it that my life is being compromised in the name of? Because I consider taking an act that causes the death of thousand, if not “millions… billions… trillions” of people, the very definition of genocide.

Merriam Webster defines genocide as the following: “genocide -noun-

geno·cide | \ ˈje-nə-ˌsīd \: the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.”

We already know this disease affects black and minority people of color more than white, or non-black/minority POC. If I wasn’t sure of this from the studies, I now know 10 different people who have had the virus. Six of them can be dismissed as first responders or people working in the medical field who were more exposed than others, and probably expected they would eventually contracted the virus. Luckily they all survived. Out of the 10, two of them were black or minority people of color. All of them survived. Two of them were hospitalized. One who was hospitalized had underlying autoimmune issues. The other one spent a week in the hospital, and almost didn’t make it. She’s black. I spoke with her a few days ago and she has lost three family members to the virus. In some other countries and continents, this very virus is being accurately referred to as genocide.

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/indigenous-peoples-south-america-face-genocide-coronavirus-pandemic/story?id=71256909

Now we have been ordered to open the schools across the country, whether or not we live in states where the numbers exceed 10,000 new cases a day, and where courts and other organizations that are able to take independent action are going back to phase 1 precautions because of the increase in transmission and no sign of slowing. (Ironically, mostly in top state swear political conventions are scheduled to be held, or no mask mandates have been ordered by the state despite drastic case increases in cases and records broken daily.)

This is happening as hospitals reach near capacity and have trouble disposing of bodies quickly enough, necessitating refrigerated trucks and storage spaces to send our corpses. The corpses of the immunocompromised. The corpses of the elderly. The corpses of the obese, whether they are obese due to medical complications or medications, disease, or struggling with weight conditions in general. The corpses of the poor, the disadvantaged, the people with less access to healthcare, and the people who fall into higher risk categories simply because of the pigment of their skin. The people who have been labeled as expendable when making decisions to proceed with the next phase of re-opening, including sending our children in to schools, “or else.”

Or else: federal funding will be pulled, and the schools will not be able to educate anyone. Families asking to send their children to school are doing so primarily because either they have been led to believe the virus is a hoax, the most irresponsible thing I have ever seen a president do in my lifetime, or because they don’t have a choice because either they are in single income households, or in dual income household they can’t afford to support on one income, and they have children who are either too young, or not otherwise able to self regulate and self monitor enough to do virtual education without adult supervision, and they can’t continue to provide shelter for those children if they don’t go to school. This is far different than a need for childcare.

If a family has to choose between being able to put a roof over their head of their child, and sending them into a building where it is almost assured their child will be exposed to the virus, something is wrong with the way things are being governed. Other countries deal with this virus without families having to choose to be careless about the virus out of a need to survive “the American dream.” For some, the American dream is not the same dream Martin Luther King Jr. referred to in his famous speech. The American dream is a tragedy of epic proportions.

When I am seeing article after article about people who have already returned to the schools to clean, to prep their classrooms, or to begin music or sport practices, and have had to either suspend those activities or are dealing with active community transmission at the schools already, including a local custodian now on a ventilator, and we haven’t even opened them yet, what business do we have opening schools as a whole, but especially in the “hot spots,” like Florida, which has topped all other states in new cases and broken its own record multiple times, but has ordered all schools to open for the Fall, completely contradicting the recommendations of virtually every heath organization or specialist in existence?

To do so will result in those who are financially able choosing virtual education to keep their children and themselves safe, including the children of most of the people making these decisions. It will also cause teachers and staff who are able to, to walk away from the profession. They are choosing their lives over their livelihood. The educational system will suffer. What will be left in the schools are the children of parents who think the best thing for their children is to go to school, because their mental health requires school services. Because they are tired of being at home. Because they have to go to work and don’t want their children home alone.

That is the system we have established in America. Schools are set up during the hours parents work, and they are staggered has to start times to help older kids watch younger kids after school until parents get home. It is not childcare. It is a system we have set up so that those who choose to serve society by educating children, or doing so during the hours those children’s parents choose to contribute to society in whatever ways they work. If school was some thing done at home, and there was no other way to care for children, our society would have devised a different plan for childcare.

Those who rely on it because we have establish a system in America where the poorest people have to rely on two incomes, and usually can’t survive on one, and possibly can’t survive one or two months without income. Further, the moratorium on evictions and disconnection of utilities in America is a joke.

What few people understand is that they are not waiving these fees. They are piling up your rent and utilities, and as soon as the orders against evictions and utilities shut offs ends, Americans will be expected to pay back all of the missing rent and utilities immediately, and they will no longer be restricted from evicting people or shutting off their utilities if they are not able to catch up the following month. Since most people have not been earning income during the last few months, or have not been earning the same income, this means as soon as the economy is re-opened, many families will go back to work, but will also face eviction and struggle to get back on their feet. Some will become homeless. Some will never recover. Some will commit suicide. Some already have. Some will eventually make it. Many will be dealing with the unexpected loss of family or friends to the virus. Many will be dealing with guilt, wondering if they exposed people they cared about to the virus. This includes the students who will be forced to go back to school in person.

Those who worry about their children’s mental health at home, will be shocked to discover how their children’s mental health will be affected by the loss of a teacher or a friend, or the anxiety caused by the precautions that dangle hugs and camaraderie in their faces at school, without allowing them to actually touch or receive what they need from friends, educators and school staff.

An article published by a psychologist addressed these issues, and concluded that the psychological damage caused by returning to school too early will likely be much greater than what would be caused by a few more weeks or months of virtual education and delaying the opening of brick and mortar schools.

Of those who are forced to return because of financial issues, family structure, or educational needs, they will be walking into a school knowingly exposing themselves to a virus that 30% of children tested test positive for. While it is rare, the virus can kill children. It can kill children without underlying conditions. While it may be rare, I don’t think the parents who lose children will take much comfort in how rare they are when burying their children.

Still others will not have to bear the experience of burying their children. But instead, will eventually have to retire to take care of their permanently disabled children, who have developed the rare autoimmune disorder that is much like the one I experience as an adult, but in children. I can barely deal with this condition as an adult. I can hardly imagine a child enduring it.

I pray for the sanity and survival of the parents who end up in this situation, that they don’t blame themselves because of the situation they were forced into. That they find a way for their children to survive in the world if they are not able to care for themselves anymore, and they will outlive the parents who are caring for them. Most of who will not have life insurance policies and other securities many privileged and non-minority groups are more likely to have. Many will not have access to mental health care when they need it the most, in the aftermath of the virus. Some will give up. Some will commit suicide. Some already have. Some will survive. Somehow. And probably be judged for how they do it.

They will not understand how they ended up here, when they followed the directions of their government, and tried to be responsible parents, providing for their children’s shelter, psychological well-being, and education. In short, many minority and poor families will be burying children.

I can’t help but imagine these children and teachers walking into the school, and picturing people walking into gas chambers in Germany. I guess it would be more like running through a gas chamber with an exit, and hoping you make it to the other side before you have inhaled so much gas that you don’t make it out.

Of the teachers and staff who survive, we will be left with only teachers who manage to survive the virus, which will disproportionately affect the minorities and black teachers and staff, along with substitutes and poor, single or inexperienced educators who have no choice other than to return to school. Ironically, the reason some of them have no choice is because they can’t afford to lose their medical insurance because of underlying conditions. The underlying conditions that make us insignificant when deaths are reported, and dismissed because “they had underlying conditions.” The translation of this is, “they were fat, old, black, or sick.”

Once we lose them, and those who can’t afford to walk away from the profession, how much better do you think the American educational system will be when it’s over? We weren’t exactly leading the planet with our education system to begin with. We were already struggling. Teachers are already underpaid and overworked. And that is an understatement. Now they are expected to risk their lives like a first responder, but with none of the added securities first responders have that provide for their family members in the event that they’re high risk job leaves their families to survive without them. Their families will be left with nothing. It is unlikely they will recover much if they are left disabled because of the long term affects of the virus, which are still being discovered, and which continue to present as much more long-lasting and permanent complications the more we learn.

So again, I ask, if action has been taken which is knowingly going to negatively impact groups of people, in particular, protected groups of people, such as the elderly, or minorities, or disabled people, up to and including their death, how is this action not the very definition of genocide?

I fail to see the difference.