So many disasters, so little time. Afghanistan’s fall to the Taliban have pushed other disasters, natural and manmade, below the fold if not off front pages.
In Haiti, it was another major earthquake five days ago. Over 2,000 dead; 12,000+ injured; tens of thousands lost homes. Neighbors tried for days to recover a man buried by a landslide before his cries for help stopped amidst rains from Tropical Storm Grace. “It is as if we are cursed,” Rev. Lucson Simeon said among the remnants of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in L’Asile. “We just keep getting beaten down. I ask myself, how can this be?
Perhaps 30 people are reported (not confirmed) missing after Tropical Depression Fred tore through western North Carolina on Tuesday. Heavy rains flooded roadways, washed away bridges, cars and homes, and flooded businesses across several counties. Search and rescue efforts continue hampered by high waters.
Six-hundred students are under quarrantine in Pickens County, S.C. Cases have jumped 100 percent there in just nine days. Gov. Henry McMaster’s (R) ban on mask mandates has created superspreader classrooms. Two teachers are hospitalized and on ventilators. There is an understanding, teacher and parent Emmett Major told NBC News, “that children are going to get sick … and there’s a sense of helplessness that there’s just nothing we can do about it.” Another mother laments, “My daughter and the other kids are just the collateral damage” to the governor’s political statement.
Joining Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana, Orgeon’s hospitals are near-overflowing with Covid patients, “shattering its COVID-19 hospitalization records day after day.” Alabama has run out of ICU beds.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden called out states for failing to protect schoolchildren:
In an escalating battle with Republican governors, President Joe Biden on Wednesday ordered his Education secretary to explore possible legal action against states that have blocked school mask mandates and other public health measures meant to protect students against COVID-19.
In response, the Education Department raised the possibility of using its civil rights arm to fight policies in Florida, Texas, Iowa and other Republican-led states that have barred public schools from requiring masks in the classroom.
Biden directed Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to “assess all available tools” that can be used against states that fail to protect students amid surging coronavirus cases.
Pundits dispense easy recriminations over U.S failure to anticipate the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t the Biden administration already rescued every American and local ally in Afghanistan? Meanwhile, U.S. politicians in state after state fail to protect their own children. Mask and vaccine protesters refuse to protect themselves or their communities. Some threaten violence.
Maybe if we called it the Taliban virus?
Historians are not the only ones who will be studying this period for centuries. Psychologists as well will have their hands full analyzing our mass psychosis.