COVID pay bump should have ended long ago
Regarding the Sept. 7 front-page article, “Grady nurses lose pandemic-era pay bump,” I am reminded of an insurance payroll manager who, after explaining to an agent why his paycheck was reduced due to a commission chargeback, remarked to me, “They always understand the positives but never understand the negatives.”
That observation still holds as some Grady Hospital nurses express outrage on social media over the end of their COVID-related pay increases. The outrage contains warnings “about the effects to employees’ finances and a potential brain drain on the system’s main hospital in downtown Atlanta.”
I don’t know if a “brain drain” will affect the hospital, but one appears to be prevalent among the complainers. The pandemic officially ended over three years ago. The nurses should have anticipated that these temporary raises would eventually end and planned accordingly.
If they now seek higher wages elsewhere, they may receive a practical lesson in supply and demand. Foresight currently seems to be in short supply — much like nurses were during the peak of the pandemic.
GREGORY MARSHALL, MARIETTA
Trump era will lead to deep disillusionment
World War I brought a profound loss of innocence to Western society. Petty differences among pampered European monarchs led to a cataclysm that left 15 to 22 million warriors and civilians dead. The survivors were left to ponder how God and humankind could have allowed such a horror. Religious faith sharply declined, and naive 19th-century notions of inevitable human progress, romantic nationalism and honorable combat were shattered.
I predict that the Donald Trump era will lead to another colossal period of deep disillusionment. We are allowing this would-be dictator and his henchmen — tech billionaire oligarchs and Christian nationalists — to wage war against the foundations of our precious democracy. Nonsensical tariff policies, the Iran war and the persecution of our much-needed immigrant workforce are devastating our economy.
Our children are going hungry due to social program cuts and dying from preventable diseases. Our food supply is becoming unsafe. Nations faithfully allied with the U.S. are being bullied, antagonized and driven into economic alliances with our adversaries. Spiraling climate change — derided by Trump as a “hoax” — is spawning catastrophic heat waves, floods, droughts and disease. The post-World War II global order prohibiting the expansion of national borders by military conquest is in peril.
Society will look back at these times and wonder how so much horrific worldwide damage and misery could have been caused by one monstrous individual’s brilliant ability to appeal to our darkest, ugliest prejudices and fears.
CHRIS MOSER, STONECREST
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