Return to Normalcy is not progress anyway.
I hope we all realize by now that nothing will ever be the same again, there's no normal to return to, and let's face it normal was never all it was cracked up to be.
On the anniversary of the pandemic declaration by the WHO, I’m reflecting on the fact that nothing has really ever returned to normal, and that was showcased in a variety of ways during a Medicaid info townhall hosted by my state rep yesterday.
It seems like many are doomed to repeat traveling a road of risk in search of safety, comfort, or at least familiarity. Someone said to me recently that we haven’t seen such corruption by business into government since Warren G. Harding. I made a collage last year about Warren G Harding’s “return to normalcy” campaign that supposedly got him elected in 1920, “after” the 1918 flu pandemic – which involved having a 1920s full of flu surges as it happens.
Image includes a screenshot From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, includes a black and white photo portrait of Warren G Harding in a business suit with white hair, his elbow on a table, his hand against his cheek with a finger pointing up, his expression is stern. The text from Wikipedia reads quote "Return to normalcy" unquote was a campaign slogan used by Warren G. Harding during the 1920 United States presidential election. Harding would go on to win the election with 60.4% of the popular vote. 1920 election. In a speech delivered on May 14, 1920, Harding proclaimed that America needed "not nostrums, but normalcy". Two months later, during a homecoming speech, Harding reaffirmed his endorsement of "normal times and a return to normalcy." World War I and the Spanish flu had upended life, and Harding said that it altered the perspective of humanity. He argued that the solution was to seek normalcy by restoring life to how it was before the war. Harding's conception of normalcy for the 1920s included deregulation, civic (text cut off) Another screenshot is a graph labeled American Journal of Public Health charts 3 surge waves of influenza and pneumonia mortality through the 1920s, in 1922, 1923, and 1926. A caption on top says Infectious disease does not respect political campaigns nor PR campaigns. A caption on the bottom reads Through the 1920s, the Sanitarians recognized that the problem continued and was in need of solutions and action, including political action, and that call to action written by JAMES A. TOBEY, was published in the American Journal of Public Health in 1928 PMC1580932.
How Warren Harding’s Campaign for ‘Normalcy’ Led to Catastrophe - The 29th President’s Promise of Safety to a Nation Shaken by WWI and the 1918 Flu Led to Freewheeling Consumption and Giddy Speculation by William Deverell May 17, 2020 But history didn’t end there. Neither Harding nor normalcy would succeed. These failures, considered exactly a century later, hold lessons for those who seek restoration in our time of fear, disease, and death. What Harding sought 100 years ago has much in common with what many of us say we seek today, and tomorrow, when the pandemic recedes. We want our lives back. We want to get away from the volatile and frightening economics of pandemic, to something that feels, well, normal. So did Harding. “If we put an end to false economics which lure humanity to utter chaos, ours will be the commanding example of world leadership today,” he pledged in that same speech. But Harding-style restoration of economy meant, for many, freewheeling consumption and giddy speculation. As the stock market and the nation’s cities began to roar in the exciting heedlessness of the Jazz Age, nary a caution was raised—except by the most astute observers. Lack of regulation was a virtue to Harding, a balm after all the rules and restrictions of war and disease. “The world needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation,” Harding had said, again in the same speech, “and that quantity of statutory enactment and excess of government offer no substitute for quality of citizenship.” Normalcy and restoration, to us as to Warren Harding, means and meant the return of a status quo of safety.
Return to normalcy - From Wikipedia "Return to normalcy" was a campaign slogan used by Warren G. Harding during the 1920 United States presidential election. Harding would go on to win the election with 60.4% of the popular vote. 1920 election. In a speech delivered on May 14, 1920, Harding proclaimed that America needed "not nostrums, but normalcy".[1] Two months later, during a homecoming speech, Harding reaffirmed his endorsement of "normal times and a return to normalcy."[2] World War I and the Spanish flu had upended life, and Harding said that it altered the perspective of humanity. He argued that the solution was to seek normalcy by restoring life to how it was before the war.[3] Harding's conception of normalcy for the 1920s included deregulation, civic engagement, and isolationism.[3] He rejected the idealism of Woodrow Wilson and the activism of Roosevelt, favoring the earlier isolationist policy of the United States.[4]
American Journal of Public Health and THE NATION'S HEALTH - The Influenza Epidemic of 1928-1929 with Comparative Data for 1918-1919 * - Selwyn D. Collins - February 1930 It will be seen that since January 1, 1920, there have occurred six more or less definite epidemics. The epidemic of 1928-1929 was the most important since that of 1920. The peaks of these six epidemics occur all the way from the early part of January to the early part of May, and the peak of the pandemic of 1918-1919 occurred much earlier in the fall than was the case in 1928-1929.
American Journal of Public Health - LAW AND LEGISLATION - JAMES A. TOBEY, LL. B., DR. P. H. Pass the Parker Bill - 1928 (NIH.gov) Though the Parker Bill by the amendments lost a certain effectiveness, it is still a very important measure, especially in its provisions for allowing the detail of U. S. Public Health Service personnel to other government bureaus; in granting a commissioned status to sanitary engineers and other scientific personnel of the service; in providing for a Nurse Corps; and in setting up a national advisory health council. Sanitarians are still interested in this excellent measure and keenly desirous that it be passed now. If it is not, the bill must be reintroduced and passed all over again in the next Congress. It would be helpful if sanitarians would communicate with their United States Senators and Representatives regarding this important matter. Do it now.
I’m mourning all who have been lost, not just directly from covid, but from covid complications, and the situations brought on by the pandemic that makes it harder for people to live, all the people prematurely disabled and suffering, and the horrendous mismanagement that has caused everyone stress that’s no doubt shortened lives. And I fear now for all those, including myself, who are being harmed and who will be harmed in the public health hellscape in America which is already harming and killing people at home and abroad at an accelerated pace. This injustice is unacceptable.
Human health and public safety should come before all else in a community because that’s why we have a civilization in the first place. It would be helpful if everyone would communicate with their United States Senators and Representatives regarding this important matter. Do it now.