Copeland's Corner: March 28, 2024

Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

With the 2024 Presidential election campaigns gearing up, I expected to hear a lot of false claims and stupid assertions made in an attempt to garner votes. I didn’t expect to hear anything as ridiculous as the question that Donald Trump and several of his Republican allies in Congress are asking: “Are you better off today under Biden’s presidency than you were four years ago under Trump’s?”

Four years ago was the year 2020. It was the year one million Americans died of Covid. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, who took the lead in tracking the disease and developing safety protocols, it was the year that 100,000 died needlessly because of valuable information in their briefings being withheld from the American people by the Trump Administration because they thought that the news would make them look bad.

2020 was the year we were trapped in our homes, without direct personal connection with friends and loved ones. It was the year we watched refrigerator trucks parked outside of New York hospitals because their morgues were too full of bodies to accommodate more dead New Yorkers inside.

2020 was the year that I got up at 3am on Tuesdays to make sure that I was the first masked one in line at the local Rite Aid drugstore to get rolls of toilet paper from their weekly shipment. It was the year I washed fresh fruits and vegetables with water and dish soap before eating and wiped down new bottles and cans with disinfectant spray before placing them in my pantry.

It was the year we watched Trump give daily nonsensical press conferences where he talked about injecting bleach into our bodies to kill the virus and mused about issuing a pardon to zookeeper and television personality Joe Exotic.

It was the year that many people, particularly in red states, were duped into believing, first that Covid was a hoax, then that they could cure it with the horse dewormer, Ivermectin. It was the year that they were led to believe that they should listen to right wing radio and TV commentators instead of doctors and scientists about the efficacy of face masks, social distancing and vaccines.

2020 was the year my friend’s father died because at the behest of his girlfriend, he attended Thanksgiving dinner at her family’s home and contracted Covid before we had a widely available vaccine.

2020 was the year that led directly to the permanent closure of several longstanding theaters, restaurants, stores and other businesses. It was the year that landlords in many places couldn’t collect rent and people being unable to feed their families or pay their bills.

Four years ago, we couldn’t sit in a room with over two or three people without fear of catching a deadly disease. Movie houses were dark. Concerts and live performances were cancelled with several venues across the country struggling to attract pre-2020 sized crowds today. Those that can are limping along. Those that can’t are closing. It was a year of social isolation that scarred our psyches in a way that many of us will never fully recover from.

So, with all of that, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that yes, we’re all MUCH better off than we were four years ago. Yes, milk and gas are a little more expensive as the result of a worldwide spike in inflation, but it beats being in lockdown and watching the news to see how many people died over the previous 24 hours.

As I said, it’s a ridiculous question.