Politics, Moderate

/

Politics

Perpetual Anger No Help Amid Pandemic

on

Good grief: Apparently, America has yet to move past the anger phase regarding COVID-19.

In 1969, you see, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

According to Fast Company, researchers from Singapore, China, Australia and Switzerland analyzed more than 20 million Twitter posts from 7 million users in 170 countries to gauge people’s state of mind regarding the coronavirus.

Using keywords such as “Wuhan” and “corona,” they found “sky-high levels of fear” worldwide as COVID-19 emerged because “people were fearful of the virus and shortages of testing and masks.”

Then came anger: “first xenophobia, and then outrage around isolation and stay-at-home ordinances, the expression of which frequently involved colorful cursing.”

Months later, as much of the world returns to some semblance of normal, America remains stuck in the anger phase.

 

Why?

Because, it seems to me, news reports remind us daily that we should remain in a high state of terror as the virus continues its spread; because some government leaders keep arbitrarily changing COVID-19 rules, requirements and restrictions; and because millions of livelihoods have been decimated and it’s anybody’s guess how this is going to play out for their future.

I place myself in the “grumpy” phase because my country continues not responding well to the situation.

Rather than unite to defeat this common challenge, we are more divided than ever.

...continued

swipe to next page

Copyright 2020 Tom Purcell, All Rights Reserved. Credit: Cagle.com

 

 

Comics

Monte Wolverton Kevin Siers Rick McKee John Darkow Steve Breen Joel Pett