The Growing Hoard on America (Project 2)

Covid-19 has placed an everlasting effect on our lives. A simple example could be seen as a never-ending coin flip. As the coin flips and turns across the cosmos it shifts and changes depending on our circumstances. On one spectrum people were not affected at all and on the other, some were affected in unimaginable ways that are too tragic for anyone to handle and those who are in middle are random variables blended in between. But in retrospect, what if there was a hidden effect that went undetected by the naked eye? One that has slipped by the masses and has continued to affect our daily lives in the pandemic. What about our spending habits and consumption of goods? I have provided three photos to support my argument of America’s complex and overwhelming consumption of goods and how it has affected us during the Covid-19 pandemic.

We have all been a victim of compulsive buying way more than we will ever realize. This impulsive behavior has increased during the pandemic as we became more recluse and reserved. Sometimes we buy a few things that we didn’t truly need either from an errand, or maybe you noticed a great deal on Amazon. However, America has a big problem with compulsive spending on a grander scale. This buying habit has been a part of our capitalist society for decades.  Not only is consumer spending 70% of our nation’s income by GDP but it has in many ways been the dramatic downfall of our society both pre-pandemic and post-pandemic.

 

Figure 1.
The photo above is a display we have seen in department stores in every mall or retail shop. The soft sandy brown pastel walls and perfectly shelved clothes neat placed in the designated area with colors that are richly isolated from the coloring of the rest of the room.  On top of it shows a 60% off displaying luring in eager consumers. The room was an abundance of lighting filled with comforting warm and cool colors. Our attention automatically focuses on the sale sign which is our Ethos, the authoritarian that demands our full undivided attention.

 

Before the Covid- 19, one of the biggest examples of America’s compulsive consumer spending is the infamous Black Friday sales that swallow stores nationwide since 1951. This massive event typically takes place around thanksgiving weekend and sets the scene for scramble and chaos. Without fail hordes of people line the malls and local stores in the luck of “one-in-a-lifetime” deals to tote home, but at what cost? Wherever Black Friday comes, violence and hoarding come after. There are endless videos and photographs of people pushing, fighting, pulling, and even trampling one another to snag mediocre sales and at the end of the day, the items that they are fighting over are not a necessity.  From 2006 to 2021, there have been a total of 17 deaths and 125 injuries stemming from Black Friday violence as sourced from BlackFridayDeathCount.com. The unprecedented scores of violence from this event have placed an irreversible plague on our society and yet the profits continue. “In Black Friday 2019 (Thanksgiving plus Black Friday) raked in $11.9 billion in online sales. That’s $7.5 billion spent on Black Friday and $4.4 billion spent on Thanksgiving. That’s a 20.2% increase over 2018.” (Source: BlackFriday.com).  

Figure. 2

Fear-based impulse buying and labor shortages from the pandemic affected our ability to obtain the goods that we need. Tissue and laundry detergent are the only few items that have been left behind by consumers. The empty walls and minimal selection of items show us the true effects of our overconsumption during the pandemic. The isle is empty minus the single customer passing by looking around for her groceries. The image leans only on logos and pathos. Pathos could instill that this was a daily issue for almost everyone. Not being able to buy what you need from your local store due to the shortages is both unsettling and fearful. However, this is not the only way we have overachieved our consumer limits and leveled the playing field for other issues.

Such issues played a part in how we chose to react to the growing impact of COVID-19. As the covid shut down in March, people would migrate to grocery stores to horde and gather resources out of fear. As panic and worry filled our lives during the pandemic time went on, the worse people become with their anxiety and hoarding.  People rushed in and over-packed their cart with food, cleaning products that they didn’t need, and this panic indulgence caused major shortages for essential products the people needed to survive.  Unfortunately by April of 2020, this deep-rooted fear caused major shortages in toilet paper and this did not help rest the thriving anxiety of our broken society.  If anything this further shook the stability of the pandemic. This was a new wave of impulse buying that was both very new for our generation and also very unpredictable.

 

Figure 3

In figure 3 there is an amazon prime box fixed on top of the trash. The walls are dull and grey and the objects around the trashed are blurred. Our attention is fixed on the grey corner of the room and the lighting helps us focus on the trash in solidarity. The Ethos in the photo is the amazon box and Pathos stirs a form of guilt for our impulse consumption.  As we only buy what interests us within the moment but not necessarily long-term. One of the champions of pandemic consumer consumption is Amazon. During the first few the of 2021 Amazon has reported earnings were 108.5 billion dollars from pandemic consumption. That is a 200 percent increase from their earnings in 2020. That is a dramatic increase from 87.4 billion dollars in revenue from 2019. The majority of their revenue is from Amazon subscriptions and memberships from their Amazon Prime services and Amazon Video services. The purchases from Amazon are just quick fixes for our entrainment and when the time comes sooner than we anticipate we forget about it, and trash it.

 Which has also been a massive issue since Amazon plastic waste has grown to become a problem. As reported by the conservation group Oceana, “Amazon’s plastic packaging waste soared by almost a third, to 270,000 tons, during the pandemic last year (2020).” That has placed a tremendous strain on our oceans, landfills, and ecosystems. Amazon has done a few things such as the Amazon Recycling Program and in 2019 they officially made all the packaging completely recyclable. Yet, their waste from their consumer is still affecting the environment and all for the sake of convenience and comfort.

 

The pandemic has forced us to isolate and internalize our traumas.  It makes sense to seek entertainment in other ways. Home renovations, personal entertainment, and retail have been the main focus for consumption. But we do actually need the things that we ordered at all? At the end of the day does it truly fulfill our needs and deepest desires? Or is it just a way for all of us to temporarily remove ourselves from our current issues? This could imply that we have further contributed to our economic dependence on our capitalistic society for the better and worse. Although, it could all just mean nothing and simply imply that we have made peace with our growing solitude.  

The Conflict of Trust with Medicine and Science: Before and After Covid-19

There is a hidden dark side to our evolution in science and medicine, and it has affected the daily lives, perceptions, and general health of our society. Unfortunately, this “hidden” part of our evolution has placed generations of trauma on spectrums such as race, gender, and even mental health. These exact spectrums have unfolded into multilayered experiences during the pandemic such as mask mandate and vaccine conflicts that have continued to persist until today. Unless the trauma is addressed, treated, and removed. Feelings of distrust, betrayal, and overall rebellion against scientific reason will persist.

During the beginning of Covid, we have seen people that have chosen to ignore the facts and the years of knowledge given by well-credited scientists such as Dr. Anthony Fauci a now world-renown speaker during the pandemic. However, even given their reputations and the endless abundance of accessible scientific journals available, there is hesitation that has continued to linger in science and medicine; as well as misinformation (such as fake news) not being regulated and used as factual information.

Since the begging of the Pandemic, the public has been informed by the CDC and world-renowned doctors and scientists on the growing status, and growing nature of the virus. Yet, people chose to believe that the virus as a government tool of control or a made-up concept revolved around conspiracy. Even though the data was present and completely disregarded the tragic lives being lost to it. This is a similar problem to the “vaccines cause autism” rampage that took told in the late 1990s after the publishing of The Lancet by Andrew Wakefield. Even after it was discredited and disapproved by several studies on the epidemiology of autism and accredited physicians the damage was done. By that time several parents have completely opted out of their children getting the MMR (measles) vaccine, even though it was proven that the measles virus was a casual path to autism itself. Ultimately, this mistake would later spawn the Anti Vax Movement that has continued to dominate and grow in our society today. However, misinformation and “fake news” are only one side of the infinite growing problem of social distrust.

Racism has played a very key part in the destruction and overall disconnection with the science community. Since the beginning of slavery, African Americans were used as mere tools and were not viewed as people. The “father of Gynecology” J. Marion Sims was known to use enslaved women as experiments for gynecology research and it was shown that he did not use anesthesia for his procedures, but only later for his white clients. This type of ignorance contributed to several other immoral acts of racial injustice to the African American community such as the infamous “Tuskegee Experiments”. This event took place in Tuskegee Alabama in 1932 and consisted of 600 non-consensual participants being injected with syphilis thinking that there getting treated for “bad blood”.  This experiment continued upregulated and undocumented for nearly forty years later in 1972. Fortunately, there was a halt to the experiment after it was published. As Quoted by the CDC report, “The Assistant Secretary for Health and Scientific Affairs appointed an Ad Hoc Advisory Panel to review the study. The advisory that the study was “ethically unjustified” …”.   (Source: Visuals, Unsplash.com

We should also focus on other factors for medical distrust due to racial domination and segregation. One general fact that should be recognized is the medical neglect that has continued to take the lives of Black women. More than we anyone would like to believe Black women are more likely to be dismissed and even turned away for undiagnosed medical conditions that they could suffer from. This includes the fact that Black Women alone are 40.8% more likely to die due to birth complications that any other ethnic race in America. A fair majority of said complications were preventable such as Hemorrhage and hypertensive disorders and Cardiomyopathy and “…hypertensive disorders of pregnancy contributed more to pregnancy-related deaths among black women than among white women” (Source CDC.com).  The final focus would be predisposed racist assumptions of people of color and their cognitive abilities called “race-norming” which is still used in medicine today and is nonetheless extremely immoral and problematic. This test does not include other factors such as quality of life, healthcare, trauma, or even education. Although there are more factors than the ones I stated, this trauma would show why we saw resistance and disinterest in getting the vaccine to Black Americans during the pandemic.

 

(Source: Sarah Mirk, Flickr.com)

In the absence of race, men and women also have split differences in their experience with healthcare. Women in America do not receive the same quality of care compared to their male counterparts. Let us use the IUD procedure as an example, you are given medications for dilation of the cervix, and they use a sharply curved clap to “pinch” the cervix. The problem with this, is that this is often done without medication afterward or aesthesia, doctors will even undermine the pain their female client could be in and at times flat out decline medications. Compared to men if they go under certain procedures such as a vasectomy. They are given numbing injections and pain medications without hesitation. On a bigger note, “women are more likely to be in poor health compared to men” (Source: The Guardian) due to gender bias and the stereotypes of “woman hysteria”.

This is also linked to increased mental health complications during the development of the pandemic. According to KFF.org, “During the pandemic, about 4 in 10 adults in the U.S. have reported symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorder”. It’s an honest comparison in 2019 where it was only one in ten adults.  I personally know many people who have transitioned from better to worse, or semi-stable to an overall decline and even I am among the vast contributors to growing the data. Forced isolation and solidarity, have increased mental instability amongst Americans and have unintentionally forced individuals into an endless cycle of insanity and routine to cope with the pandemic. It doesn’t help that there are external factors that contributed to the mental health crisis to increase in America such as increased gas rates, wage disparities (including minimum wage), increased hours and workload to due shortages, job displacements, and so on.

(Photo Source: KFF.org)

 

It is fair to say that our healthcare system and scientific community has failed to provide reinsurance to our society. This in no way blinds the fact that we do have ethical scientists, doctors, and quality workers in our health care community, but there is serious work that needs to be done. If we continue the path of neglect and do not reassure society with well-documented work within ethical and moral standards. Then we will continue to fall short in the next upcoming wave of a possible pandemic in the future. Unification and understanding is key.

The Virtual Covid Experience

It’s as if someone unleashed Jumanji among us all and we are playing infinitely towards the end. With each turn, a rumbling effect of change unravels and shifts our perspective.   First, the wave of panic with the ongoing cases and a new virus update, to the anger and confusion, and ongoing frustration of the CDC changing the course of how we should manage it all. But, what of the humor that lies in the middle of the conflicts? Maybe it’s time we see the light of all the predicaments instead of hiding indoors and letting it take over us all.

For the past two years, everything has felt more like a simulation than reality. We have seen the lengths that people will go through to greatly embarrass themselves. Watching people swarm the grocery stores and horde food, tissue, and cleaning products has honestly helped place everything into perspective. I wouldn’t put it past anyone if someone hauled three shopping carts worth of nonsense into their homes, only to return it a day later. Now things have shifted where we have a shortage of various items and inflation is keeping the impulse of the masses at bay. It’s like watching the chaos of the cirrus being whipped into shape by a lion tamer.

I think the best form of irony comes from the vaccine and mask mandates that started in March of 2020. People felt as if their rights were being taken away by trying to save their lives from a deadly virus. could die from “carbon dioxide poisoning” by breathing in their own air in the mask. Honesty, I could be more in shock with humanity up until that moment. Face masks were used in hospitals, dentistry and even across the world for decades and without a single objection and now suddenly fear of face mask have plagued the country. With the constant buffoonery of common sense, I am starting to believe in the virtual reality conspiracy. Yet, my hope continues to swing from a single brain cell.  

On a brighter note, pandemic pets were key headlines for quite some time. The saying “a dog is a man’s best friend”, has completely taken on a new meaning at this point. In turn to digest and take charge of Covid was to adopt a pet to tolerate it with a plus one, or so. I have also played a part in the “plus one” impulse with my own pup, and I can confidently say it is well worth the headache. I think with depression and anxiety on the rise, a furry friend would defiantly soothe the nerves. I can only hope that in exchange when things go back to normal that we don’t give our pets separation anxiety. That would be an uncomfortable form of reality.

Overall, we can all say that the pandemic has swung at us in all directions like unavoidable infinite pandemonium. However, we can honestly say there have been various low moments within our grief but what is critical in moments of chaos is laughs and unity. If we can look through all that we have transcended for the past two years. It is a slight possibility we can move forward in better spirits.

(Source: Nora Lane) (Personal photo and edited by me)