I find it deeply disturbing to hear anyone refer to the pandemic in the past tense. It's still not over, no matter how much they want to pretend that it is. The rush to get back to normal has so many living in denial. "Normal" is viewed through rose-colored glasses. "Normal" is exalted above all else. "Normal" is worth sacrificing life, safety, and future unknown health risks. "Normal" was perfect, according to their version of events. I do so despise this idealization of "normal" and the worship of the vaunted "before times."
Let me tell you about your precious "normal." It was far from perfect. So very far. Even when things were "normal," horrors were normalized. Things like poverty, war, and racism. Even back in "normal" times, there was a foreshadowing of how our society would handle a pandemic in how it dealt with gun violence, healthcare, and climate change. Ignore it, make it partisan, worry about the wrong things, let lobbyists have their way, disregard the human cost, lie to ourselves, procrastinate.
And just as behind the scenes health insurance companies, gun manufacturers, and fossil fuel companies are getting in the way of much-needed reforms, so too are the the business bigwigs and the doctors they bought off to push us towards what they like to call the "urgency of normal." Read between the lines and see their strategy. They minimize the dangers of COVID and say that my perspective is a neurotic overreaction. They've got too many of us either living in a fool's paradise or else resigned to getting infected.
If we would accept the truth about how the world was when it was normal, we'd realize that it wasn't good enough. If we were fully aware of how much our government has screwed up in its pathetic response to the pandemic, we'd realize it's not good enough, either. And if we could face the truth about how to end the pandemic once and for all, we'd realize that, rather than going back to normal, we need to rethink and redesign the systems and structures that have failed us. Instead of doing any of these things, we risk everything in pursuit of normal.
a few relevant links:
There Is Nothing Normal about One Million People Dead from COVID
The Kids Orphaned by COVID Won’t Return to ‘Normal’
You Are Not Entitled To Our Deaths: COVID, Abled Supremacy & Interdependence
How COVID-19 Attacks the Body: Lessons From the Morgue
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