To the editor:

Just to remind ourselves:

It is not normal for a sickness that has killed almost a quarter of a million people in America, and over a million people worldwide, to be labeled by anyone as “nothing to worry about.”

It is not normal for experts — in medicine, climate, finances, education, as well as government staff people who have decades of experience with running health, environmental and financial agencies — to be simply ignored.

It is not normal for anyone to be cavalier about infecting people who work for them with a disease that could be deadly.

It is not normal for the people of the United States to be so ill-informed or misinformed as to the health of people in positions of public trust at the head of our government that we find we cease to listen.

It is not normal for a group to plot to kidnap the governor of a state to start a civil war, and for the perpetrators not to be held as domestic terrorists.

It is not normal to have two political parties that are so unsure of themselves that they have to “watch” each other at polling places.

And it is not normal for any elected official in the USA to be unwilling — in advance — to abide by the vote of the people.

In short, it is not normal, and immensely tragic, that our “baseline” expectations may have changed so much that who people listen to for their information (corporations, particular media groups, online trolls) and how people behave toward one another might have become an unrecognizable reality.

I refuse to accept these things as simply “the new normal.”

Katharine Preston

Essex