We know--or we can guess--overdose deaths increased because of the pandemic. In fact, it may be the worst year on record. In my very small mostly rural county, we had seven times as many overdose deaths as covid deaths.

My county is tiny, mostly dirt roads, and in Vermont, which has handled the pandemic like more like a sane country that values its people than the rest of the US. So those numbers are small -- 3 covid deaths. 21 due to overdose.

Part of the drug deaths of the pandemic have to do with supply chains--dealers goosing their product with even more dangerous additives because they can't get the regular stuff. There's also the boom-bust--users forced to white knuckle going all in--too far--when they can.

I think of a user whose mother I know, who died with no drugs in his system. His body broke down. I can't help but wonder if that was another price of the pandemic. Cold turkey for a user on the street with serious pre-existing conditions can be a death sentence.

To be super clear--anybody who says these deaths are the result of lockdowns can fuck right off. They're not. They're the result of a pandemic that could have been contained but was instead stoked, a fire we as a nation--but most of all Trump--set all around ourselves.

I recognize that adding some portion of the OD deaths to Trump's death toll will strike some as hyperbolic. Maybe so. But it is surely no more an error in the direction of attribution than the massive, *increasing* sin of normalization.

All it takes to see the normalization of death to which we've subconsciously committed ourselves is a fairly quick study of a death toll graph. What was unbearable in April or shocking in July passes without too much mention in December.

Even as other deaths add up. I have heart disease, had a heart attack at 44. It's been a stressful year! There've been times I felt an ache in my chest or a ripple in my arm that I would've otherwise gone to the ER. Just to be on the safe side. I'm fine. Others, of course, died.

Because none of us are on the safe side now. This is what we've normalized, and maybe why we've normalized it: Not just the loss of life--"incalcuable," declared a NYT banner headline on May 24, when it was *100,000*--but the risk we've all absorbed. So we pretend it's not there.

And even all those of us who loathe the Trump regime participate in its normalization. There was a time, this past summer, when "reasonable" people spoke of crimes against humanity, that there were comparisons to the mass killing of the potato famine. Now, we make fun of him.

I make fun of him, too. One of my favorite stories, friend of a friend working construction, years ago, with an older Jewish guy. Notices the number on his arm. Asks in a whisper. "Oh yeah," says the old guy. "Them Nazzees. They wuz real assholes."

I share instinct to mock Trump. But let's not do so at expense of naming the dead who indict him. Let's not normalize this into "incompetence" or even "narcissism." Some 10s or 100s of thousands are dead because of his choices--& he's actively working for death w/ his lies now.