As GOP Blocks Covid Relief, Experts Warn of 'Wave of Despair' and Devastating Anecdotes Show Crisis
As GOP Blocks Covid Relief, Experts Warn of 'Wave of Despair' and Devastating Anecdotes Show Crisis Already Here
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/13/gop-blocks-covid-relief-experts-warn-wave-despair-and-devastating-anecdotes-show
As millions of Americans grapple with the consequences of the refusal by the Trump administration and GOP lawmakers to extend the $600 weekly unemployment benefit or provide other urgent relief, experts warned Thursday that the coronavirus pandemic could directly lead to a "wave of despair"—including pervasive economic anxieties, increased suicides, and drug overdoses across the country.
The American Medical Association has already reported a rise in fatal opioid overdoses in at least 35 states during the pandemic, according to a Guardian report, and medical examiners in a number of states have reported a rise in suicides five months into the public health and economic crisis.
Fifty-eight suicides have been reported in Cook County, Illinois so far in 2020, compared with 56 total suicides in all of 2019. Low-income, predominantly Black neighborhoods, which have borne the brunt of the pandemic's effects, have seen the sharpest rise in suicides in the county. Officials in cities and counties in California, New Mexico, and Georgia have also been startled by rises in suicides there.
On social media, Washington Post journalist Jeff Stein has posted a number of anecdotes found on the online forum Reddit since the pandemic began, with people across the country this week describing the precarious circumstances they've been thrown into following Senate Republicans' refusal to extend a federal eviction moratorium for some Americans and the $600 benefit, claiming that doing so would keep unemployed people from seeking work—despite evidence to the contrary.
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