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One Relatively Easy Way To Judge Character

Missouri vs. The Dow Jones.

Ted Bauer
2 min readNov 16, 2022

There was a day somewhere during COVID when an eight year-old boy in Missouri committed suicide. I cannot find the exact story online anymore, but I do remember it being covered, and a note speaking to how hard COVID was. While it distresses me that I can’t find that particular story, the general narrative on youth suicide during COVID was not good, with the NIH suggesting youth suicide was definitely up during Year 1 of COVID. The general trend line was that suicides over the age of eight statistically increased, and perhaps by a statistically significant margin among adolescents.

OK, so that’s all very bad. Take yourself to the day of a specific eight year-old in Missouri, or another age in another location. On the same day as that happened, the Dow dropped 400 points, possibly 500. It wasn’t quite a “floodgates are open” moment, but it wasn’t good economically either.

I remember I was at a bar-restaurant that day, and both stories had been presented, and there was an argument/discussion in the bar area about what story was more relevant. A lot of guys wanted to argue that the decline of the Dow for that one day was more relevant, because it impacted more lives financially. Others, myself included, argued that someone eight years old wanting to kill themselves because of…

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Ted Bauer
Ted Bauer

Written by Ted Bauer

I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.

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