Letter: When are we going to address community’s core issues? – Mountain Xpress

There is so much finger-pointing and anger among everyday people and communities as the pandemic continues. On both sides, it has become an extremely polarizing issue, which has drawn us apart from one another. I have begun to wonder if the conversation will be had about root causes of the pandemic and, more so, the severity of it in our country.

It is easy to blame politicians for their shortcomings, but when are we going to address the fact that our private, for-profit hospitals have been intentionally under- and defunded to cut costs in the name of enriching hospital CEOs? When are we going to talk about the fact that the animal feedlots, where many of our meals come from, are the ideal breeding ground for the next pandemic? When are we going to air our frustrations that not only politically, but socially, we were unprepared for and uneducated about the reality that a pandemic like this was not only predictable, but imminent?

What are we going to do to make sure that we arent in the same situation when this inevitably happens again as a function of our intentional dispossession of functioning community dynamics, an intentionally broken food and health system, and a growing world with increasing chronic disease and wealth disparity? Are we going to finger-point at one another about masks and vaccines and blame local politicians about their policies we agree with or disagree with, or are we going to look at these harsh core issues in the face and address them with the severity and intensity that they merit?

Noah PoulosAsheville

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Letter: When are we going to address community's core issues? - Mountain Xpress