(Author’s Note: This commentary was first written on 9/10/17 as Hurricane Irma was bearing down on Florida. Now, five years later we have just experienced Hurricane Ian, an even stronger storm. As we pick up the pieces of our lives again, it’s worth remembering the same thoughts.)

Hurricanes have a way of making everything else seem irrelevant. As I write these words, Hurricane Irma is bearing down on my state of Florida.

It’s September 10, just one day from the 16^th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attack that killed about 3,000 Americans and I haven’t heard one word about that mentioned in the news media. Usually, this time of year it’s the number one subject on every newscast.

Politics has taken a back seat to the overwhelming needs of the people of Texas after the devastation of Hurricane Harvey and the pending disaster of Hurricane Irma in Florida. People across the country are focused on the alarming weather maps that depict the awesome power of a hurricane in bold and impressive colors. News coverage of anything else becomes irrelevant as people riveted to the television wait for the next advisory from the meteorologists at The Weather Channel.

President Trump sensed the importance of bringing the country together in this time of crisis. To mitigate the situation, he made a deal with the Democrats that would expedite funding for disaster relief and continue funding of the government for at least three more months.

Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi were all smiles after this unexpected presidential capitulation to their short-term goals. The president was thinking more of the needs of the country than partisan politics – a much-needed attitude in Congress that hopefully these Democratic leaders will remember next time funding of the government comes up again.

Even the constant coverage of protests demanding the removal of Confederate statutes and the racial divide in this country were no longer the big stories. The issues that divide our country were suddenly less important than the issues that bring us together. No one was demanding disaster relief only for Democrats or Republicans.

Hurricanes demand your attention. They just won’t let you become distracted by other concerns that are far less important. They force you to consider what really matters in a world where we have so many trivial distractions such as the latest iPhone or what’s trending on social media.

I have a brother who lives in California where earthquakes are all too common. Earthquakes come without warning. There’s no time to plan – only time to react. That means you can’t make preparations, you can’t take steps to mitigate the damage apart from building codes for better construction. You can’t spend time working out a plan to keep your family safe. There’s no time for considering the future.

Hurricanes, however, give you time to think; time to prepare. They force you to make choices about your priorities and the things that really matter. It starts with your family – safety comes first. Is it safe to stay in your home or should you evacuate? If you evacuate where do you go? How many friends do you have who would be gracious enough to accept you if you wanted to take refuge in their home?

You have to make choices about your property. What things are irreplaceable and what things don’t really matter? Ultimately the only thing that is irreplaceable is human life.

We don’t like to consider that we might lose our life in a hurricane but it happens to people every year. We try to pretend we’re only really worried about our property but everyone who has ever faced a Category 5 hurricane must also consider their own destiny. It’s a good time to remember that there are some things we don’t control in this world. Meteorologists have gotten very good at measuring the strength of hurricanes and pretty accurate predicting where they will go, but they have no control over what they do.

Actress Jennifer Lawrence is blaming President Trump for these hurricanes but even Trump doesn’t have that much power. Only God can make a hurricane and only He is in control of the outcome. It’s a good time to ask yourself if you’re ready to stand before Him if the hurricane is coming for you.

We all know the Covid pandemic has cost many Americans their lives. According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center, the U.S. death toll has now reached 1,047,563. But what about other costs of the pandemic?

William A. Galston, writing in The Wall Street Journal, tells us we now know much more about the cost of the pandemic. A report recently released by the National Center for Health Statistics reveals that during the peak pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, life expectancy in the U.S. – the most basic measure of national well-being – declined by a stunning 2.7 years, from 78.8 to 76.1 years, the lowest level since 1996. Put simply, the pandemic erased the effects of a quarter-century of progress in medical innovation and healthier lifestyles.

This is not simply a reflection of the thousands of lives lost in the pandemic, sooner than they might otherwise have died. It also reflects the lives lost through delayed medical check-ups, delayed cancer screening, delayed surgery, increased mental illness and suicides, as well as drug addiction deaths.

Galston tells us these losses weren’t distributed evenly across the population. Life expectancy declined by 3.1 years for men but 2.3 years for women. Asian Americans showed the smallest loss (2.1 years), compared with whites (2.4), blacks (4.0), Hispanics (4.2), and Native Americans/Alaska Natives (6.6). For every group, the decline among men was substantially higher than that among women, and the overall difference between men and women widened from 4.8 years to just under 6 years, a gap last seen in the mid-1990s.

Even more alarming is that the U.S. fared poorly in comparison to other countries. In 2020 the U.S. loss of life expectancy was more than three times the average of other advanced nations. In 2021, while most of its peers regained some lost ground, the U.S. continued moving in the wrong direction. This has widened the life-expectancy gap between the U.S. and peer nations by nearly two years.

What about public education?

The just-released report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows a similar depressing picture. Among fourth-graders, between 2020 and 2022, overall reading and math scores fell by 5 and 7 points, respectively, to lows not seen in decades. As with life expectancy, groups that lagged behind the national average tended to do the worst. In math achievement, for example, black students lost 13 points and Hispanic students 8 points, compared with 6 points for Asian students and 5 for white students. The differences were even more stark between high and low achieving individuals. At the top, NAEP scores in reading and math fell by an average of 2 to 3 points; at the bottom, by 10 to 12 points.

Now we know the real cost of those school closures to protect the least vulnerable members of the population. The teachers’ unions certainly deserve much of the blame for this dismal report.

How well did other countries do, especially those who didn’t close schools?

Glad you asked. A recent academic paper studied Swedish primary school students and found no achievement losses during the pandemic. Moreover, low-achieving students and those from low-income families did about as well as those who ranked higher on these measures. Unlike most of its peers, including other Nordic countries, Sweden kept its primary schools open throughout the pandemic.

Early in the Biden Administration, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky announced a new study that revealed it was safe to reopen schools even before teachers were vaccinated. But the White House, influenced by the teachers unions, insisted schools be kept closed until teachers were vaccinated. Now we know the real cost of decisions like that one. Hopefully, we have learned these lessons well and won’t repeat them in the future.