After mass 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
“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.”
With COVID-19, American society has even come to accept the deaths of children from a preventable cause. In a recent, 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.
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. “It’s remarkable how that responsibility has been sort of abdicated, is how I would describe it,” Rajan says.
“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.”