While some Democrats argue that Trump is murdering Americans by not pushing for — it seems — a permanent closure of everything, other things are killing people. One of them: a temporary closure of everything.
In California — a place where leaders take to constrictive policies like chocolate takes to fudge — mental health is melting down as sad citizens sink into a swirl of suicide.
As reported by San Francisco’s ABC7, Dr. Mike deBoisblanc of Walnut Creek’s John Muir Medical Center claims he and his fellow physicians saw enough people take their own lives last month to fill an entire unquarantined year.
It’s unprecedented:
“We’ve never seen numbers like this, in such a short period of time. I mean, we’ve seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”
Therefore, in Mike’s view, it’s time for the COVID clampdown to release its grip:
“Personally, I think it’s time. I think, originally, this (the shelter-in-place order) was put in place to flatten the curve and to make sure hospitals have the resources to take care of COVID patients.We have the current resources to do that, and our other community health is suffering.”
John Muir trauma nurse Kacey Hansen agrees the end should be near. Not only has the 33-year hospital veteran seen more suicides, but she says medical workers have been less able to save those lives wrought with deadly despair.
The steep incline’s been stunning:
“What I have seen recently, I have never seen before. I have never seen so much intentional injury.”
It’s not much of a surprise. As you’ve surely read, many in the rapturously coastal Golden State have been unable to get out and about, even just to sit at the beach — that healing home to the opiatic ocean. Among many other prohibitions, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s restrictions took a Pacific Coast paradise and turned it into a shoreless shadow of its former self.
Of course, it isn’t just California that’s mired in malaise. On March 29th, RedState’s Elizabeth Vaughn observed that “Suicides Topped Coronavirus Deaths Last Week.”
And on April 2nd, my colleague Brandon Morse relayed the following:
[Crisis hotlines] are experiencing high call volumes in Massachusetts according to the Boston Globe. KVAL-TV in Oregon is reporting the same. According to them, police responses to suicide attempts or threats are up drastically.
Calls for threats or attempts of suicide are up 41% over this time last year, and up 23% from the 10 days prior to the state of emergency in Portland, Police Chief Jami Resch said in a news conference Tuesday.
The country’s certainly been shifted into a strange gear. As I suggested previously, we’ve put health officials in charge of the economy. But the distance between germs and the citizenry isn’t the only proper metric for well-being.
And amid unemployment and the inability to engage with one another and the joys that make life worth living, Americans are sick of — as well as from — being shut down.
-ALEX
See 3 more pieces from me:
Michael Moore Reads Trump’s Mind and Nails His Only Path to Re-Election
We Don’t Need No Education: University of California Votes Unanimously to Dump the ACT and SAT
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