OPEN LETTER | About our little misunderstanding

    An open letter to my friends in the comments section.

    open letter fountain
    FIGHTING SOMETHING OFF—As if anyone should have been using that anyway. (Image via author)

    To my friends, current and former:

    On Wednesday, I published a column lamenting that senior year is cancelled for the Class of 2020. I wrote about feeling defeated and angry to miss out on returning to my beloved alma mater to finish our final term and graduate with my friends and classmates in May. I wrote in the context of a cancellation craze which, while driven by genuine concern for public health, has sped out of administrators’ control and ignores its own costs.

    Mirroring the concept quite well, and almost as if to prove my point, a few of you rushed to the comments section to attempt to add me (or, at least, my article) to the list of cancellations. Like the trigger-happy administrators who are literally kicking our classmates out of their homes under the false pretense of keeping them safe, you reacted without first counting the cost.

    I am not writing to the groupthink Internet bullies whom I have never met, who bloodied the waters, who likely never read my piece and who came to sling slurs and heap ad hominem garbage. Some of these are our classmates, but they were never friends to me. They are not you.

    I am writing to you, who identified a tension between my feelings (or, perhaps, my politics) and the respect you have (or had) for me. You may have only given the column a cursory look, or perhaps you had to read it without your typical focus since it is a stressful time. Regardless, you did not intentionally misinterpret me. Yet you missed the entire point of the piece.

    You are the most intelligent people I know. I know that you can tell the difference between a headline and an argumentative thesis. I know that you can discern irony, tone, metaphor, and purpose. You might re-read slowly and ask yourself whether I became “very selfish and ill-informed” overnight, or whether perhaps instead my piece doesn’t do what you think it does.

    You battled a straw man amongst yourselves, disproving claims I never made. You read past me instead of reading me, you sought to correct incongruity instead of to understand the other, and you called for me to lie and condemn myself by retracting the article.

    Some of you named my immunocompromised loved ones as victims of my supposedly pro-infection behavior. Some of you brought into question my clinical practice as a nationally registered Advanced EMT. You should know that few people in this world are patient enough to forgive such cheap shots and such fraud.

    You should understand that the piece does not rely on my clinical experience, specifically because that has nothing to do with how it feels to be a 2020 senior who got cancelled, which is the topic of the column. Nobody in my readership thinks the column is medical advice, no matter how stupid or uneducated you may think your fellow readers are. They, along with the rest of the common sense wielding public, know the difference between “don’t panic” and “don’t take necessary precautions.” In any case, as it should turn out, my column exhorts “standard precautions” and praises “coordinated containment of disease.”

    If I reacted to danger like a Penn administrator, I would be too terrified to respond to calls for help, let alone treat potentially infected patients. My co-workers and I meet and exceed CDC guidelines for containment and personal protective equipment. We go through hell to protect our loved ones and yours.

    We are all human, and we all make mistakes. Even friends. Especially friends. I forgive you.

    Yours truly

    Dominic Gregorio, C’20

    57 COMMENTS

    1. Noone misunderstood anything snowflake. What you wrote was uninformed drivel, and you were chastised for it. Now be a grown up and learn something from the experience.

      • USA Flu Season Numbers
        —2017-2018–
        900,000 hospitalized
        80,000 deaths
        Nothing shut down…Fauci?
        Stock Market at 24,000

        —2018-2019 Oct thru May—
        647,000 hospitalized
        61,200 DEAD
        NOTHING shut down…Fauci?
        Stock Market at 26,000 points.

        —2019-2020–
        (Oct – Feb 29th – 3 months to go per CDC)
        36 MILLION flu illnesses
        370,000 hospitalizations
        22,000 DEATHS including 144 children.
        NOTHING shut down …Fauci ?
        Stock Market zoomed to 29,551

        —COV19 Numbers As of 3/18/2020–
        5,881 cases and 107 deaths
        Stock Market has plunged 10,000 points
        Everyday American life has screeched to standstill.
        Chicken Little Fauci is in total panic mode.
        Why?!

        • Ever hear of something called “exponential growth”? COVID-19 has a higher r_0 than flu. It has a higher death rate, as well (just divide the number of deaths by the number of total cases for COVID-19 so far, versus the 2019-2020 flu season, if you’re not convinced). It will have an even higher death rate as healthcare systems become saturated and we start to run out of beds, ventilators, etc.

          Copy-pasting from my earlier comment:

          A recent study by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team suggested that an unmitigated spread of the virus could result in as many as 80% of the population infected and 2.2 million American deaths. That’s about five times as high as the number of Americans who died in World War II. See: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

          Personally, I take the lukewarm and uncontroversial stance that diseases that stand to kill hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people should be vigorously combated with every tool at our disposal. Don’t you agree?

    2. I see you decided to double-down, Dom.
      Considering you’ve gotten through your junior year, I’m guessing Penn is pretty generous with grades.
      On the other hand, with your critical thinking skills being what they are, you should thrive if you select a career in right-wing media.

    3. Open Letter: You’re still a jackass. And I’m sorry other people will miss out on things in at the end of their senior year of college. But I am ecstatic that you’re missing out and I’m loving the extremely sore rear end you have over it. One thing to keep in mind, sport is that things like this will follow you around.

      Cry more, sparky. Your tears are enjoyed by everyone who doesn’t have their head up their butt.

      I can’t wait until your next clueless screed.

    4. Clearly these are his submissions to work for Fox News. Sorry to all the Penn grads who’s degree became just a tiny less valuable because of people like this.

    5. Covid -19, It’s not the cold or the flu. Do the numbers. Cold and flu had a head start, but this one is just starting to infect people, and killing doctors on the way. It’s hyper contagious.

      800 People died in Italy yesterday from a virus that is not the flu.

      The flu you know you have nearly immediately. People are taught to stay at home and avoid others. If you know you have flu, and go out, you’ll know you’re the asshole that gave it to others. The others who find out the next day can wake up and know you’re the asshole. Corona… you can have it, you won’t know you’re spreading it for maybe 14 days, then you fall ill. But you’ve spread it like the flu. Shake hands rub your nose, there it is. Its not that it’s spreading fast, it’s that you don’t know you’re spreading it. The flu kills people and you know who you killed and the options are less if your not the asshole that went out while sick. Corona kills people. But you can meet with your dad who’s meeting your grandma and neither will know you had it. If grandma dies two weeks later you won’t even have a clue you gave it to her.

      STOP GOING OUT UNTIL THIS IS OVER. IT’S NOT A COLD.

    6. The dangers of writing essays when high.

      You think it makes sense in the moment, but then later you realize it is drivel.

      Our infection rate is on the same trajectory as Italy, where doctors are dying because they have run out of glove and there aren’t enough hospital beds for all the patients. This means there are no beds for you either when you get in a car crash or when your parents have a heart attack.

      Coronovirus has different infection rate and different consequences than the flu or common cold.

      Celebrate the fact that UPENN saved lives, and cherish the fact that you got to participate in helping save lives.

      I encourage to write a follow up column describing the rates of infections, the consequences of theses infections, and the worldwide effects and responses to these infections, and what UPENN students can do to turn their disappointment over senior year ending early into productive contributions to the community.

    7. I thought Ivy Leaguers were supposed to be very intelligent. This kid’s garbage writing (oh no, I used an ad hominem!) doesn’t deserve publication. (And no, not being published is not “an attack on your free speech” since the school newspaper isn’t the government.) The conservative propaganda to minimize the risk of this pandemic is mind-boggling.

    8. These articles are not going to age well. This pandemic is on track to kill tens-if not hundreds-of thousands of people worldwide. When future graduate schools or employers look you up, you will be the guy whining about his lost senior spring in the midst of a global public health crisis. Not a good look. Particularly since you doubled down.

    9. I’m going to assume you’re an English major or something because that’s the only way to explain how you’re this math illiterate. Actually that’s disrespectful to English majors because I’m assuming they at least passed college algebra and learned about exponential growth.

    10. Nope, nope, nope. Still no change and you just added fuel to the dumpster fire that you have created for yourself. An apology is suppose to be humble but instead you forgive others? That is not how an apology or a clarification works, unless you are a narcissist. Hmmmm…might be on to something here. #yupstillpriviledged #theinternetisforever #keepfeedingthefire

    11. Dom,
      You are an incredibly entitled spoiled child. My teenagers have quadruple the maturity that you do, and are exponentially more intelligent, as are most high schoolers I know. Good God, who raised you? I would be so ashamed if you were my son. I hope you pay your parents back for the money they wasted on your education.
      Instead of doubling down on the arrogant snowflake temper tantrum, could you have instead chosen to grow as a human being? Maturity dictates that one must sometimes reflect on criticism and make amends for our foolish actions. There’s still time.

    12. “Read: until my classmates and I are no longer Quakers.”

      Keep that name out of your mouth, you never were one. As for the rest of what you’ve written? I hope you learn. Assuming you’re actually capable of caring for others besides yourself, I hope none of your loved ones suffer for your foolishness.

    13. Here’s something you may not know. Your senior year – no matter how magical or perfect – will eventually be a memory, and not even a terribly important one. In fact, if your senior year were ever your most important memory, that would probably suggest your life held little meaning. These letters, though – this printed lack of empathy and respect for others’ suffering – they may haunt you.

    14. There was no misunderstanding. It’s called gaslighting. Shame on you and shame on the UPenn Statesman for publishing the first article and this one. You’re promoting dangerous “opinions.”

    15. Domenic,
      In your first article, you stated:
      “I was willing to look the other way until their anal-retentive coronavirus craze culminated in cancelling the only senior year I’ll ever have.”
      “Our alma mater’s response to coronavirus is officially over-the-top. ”
      “I will even permit that I might be a young, otherwise-healthy, privileged asshole for wanting to live out the final days of this once-in-a-lifetime chance to attend the school of my dreams in person. I don’t care. I’m seething.”
      No one misunderstood you.
      You had a tantrum a toddler would envy, you got called out for it, and now you are attempting to backtrack.
      The facts of this international health crisis don’t care about your feelings.
      Grow up.

    16. Perhaps readers misunderstood the purpose of your piece… or perhaps you just didn’t write it well enough? If the piece were well-written, there’d have been no doubt as to your actual message. ::shrug::

      It sure is fun to belittle others trying to argue for the public’s wellbeing though, isn’t it?

    17. I’m a junior at Penn and I lived in the same hall as Domenic last year. We know each other. Not super well, and across our share of political differences, but I’d confidently wager there has been more malice and nastiness in the comments on his two recent columns than Domenic has dished out over an entire lifetime.

      I can vaguely see how, if you’ve never met him, you can read him as an obnoxious, entitled, self-absorbed, anti-science Trump worshipper. For what it’s worth, Domenic is not these things. Judging by his ever-present smile and the warmth he exudes, you’d be forgiven for thinking he’s a card-carrying Canadian.

      The majority of the times I see him around campus, he’s decked out in the garb of Penn’s bicycle-riding, volunteer undergraduate EMT force. Without a doubt, he’s done more as a volunteer first-responder to positively impact the health of Penn students and the local community than 99% of undergraduates — or the detractors in these comments sections.

      All of us students feel the sting of the loss of this semester, let alone the far graver economic and health consequences of this outbreak, but I’ve found it helpful to conceptualize Penn’s top-down decree to stay clear of class and campus as something I willfully do to play my small part in protecting my parents, peers, and professors.

    18. You’re absolutely right. The Covid-19 virus stole your senior year, weddings, lives, high school graduations, jobs, lives, health, homes, serenity, lives, businesses,recitals, birthday celebrations, auditions, movie premieres, sporting events,lives. This time is lost forever and it’s incredibly disappointing and tragic. You will never have this moment again and it’s going to define your life forever, as long as you live. Because it’s your response to this pandemic that will mark you for life and effect every decision you ever make, for as long as you live. More than any ceremony or last toast.
      You’re either going to grow up and recognize that you’re living through something unprecedented and extraordinary: an incredible act of global cooperation, a coordinated effort to keep as many humans safe as possible while researchers look for a solution and humans find as many ways possible to care for one another or you’re going to continue along the adolescent path you’ve set for yourself and join the ranks of those who will be forever remembered after this is over as stunted, selfish and unnecessary of regard.
      No one really cares what you choose, btw, there will always be children in adult bodies to be managed by the grown ups.

    19. Dom, I guess you’ll be a “great” EMT because you don’t have any empathy for others to make you care for your patients if they don’t make it. Keep on proving how underprepared you are for the real world where you are expected to learn how to have responsibility for your words and actions. And good luck with getting a job once your potential employers realize you’re that snowflake loser who whined on the internet about not getting to party one last time because his school was trying to stem a deadly pandemic.

    20. No one is upset with you for expressing your disappointment. In fact I kind of enjoyed the weird-ass list of things you’re missing while quarantined because it reminds me of watching Gilmore Girls.

      You however can take COVID19 as a real threat and not downplay the danger while also being super disappointed. Both of those are possible. Instead, ya came off as an insensitive asshole in a very real crisis that is killing thousands of people a day right now.

      ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      I mean it’s your life.
      But I don’t know who you think this will appeal to.

    21. Ohmygoodness: we didn’t “get” you. Is that what you’re going with?

      Lookit, Dominic, it’s nice to be young and all flush with certainty. We’ve all been there. Poets and satirists (Wilde: “I’m not young enough to know everything”) and all sorts of people who know scads more than you have been using it as for centuries; it’s basically a cliche.

      But few of them had an internet — one that never forgets — to which to commit their silliness. But your articles are a perfect storm of extreme self-fullness and willingness to stick one’s name on it for eternity. One day, you’ll realize all that. Probably sooner than you think.

    22. In my generation they cancelled the 1980 Summer Olympics due to The USSR invading Afghanistan. Now THAT must have been SOME disappointment for our athletes who had trained all of their lives for that moment. They’ll probably POSTPONE this year’s Olympics but eventually they will be played.Yes, you studied 4 years (give or take) for this award, for this moment, for this ceremony, but put it into some perspective. “It’s not all about you” as they say these days.

    23. Oh PS: I don’t appreciate being forced to subscribe or considered a “suspected BOT” and not published. That’s the ONLY thing that had changed. I guess no BOTS want to subscribe to your newsletter. Neither do I.

    24. This is wild (not Wilde). You go “through hell” because you have to wear protective personal equipment to do your job? Were you planning on wearing it to graduation? But surely you know that there isn’t enough of it to protect health care providers, let alone graduating seniors. Perhaps the University should make an exception to the graduation restrictions and perform the ceremony just for you.

      We almost wish we were this narcissistic, bordering on sociopathic. It would make our lives easier if we didn’t have to experience guilt and remorse. We urge you to reconsider your career choice and go into hedge fund management, or perhaps venture capitalism.

    25. While I try not to underestimate the tone-deafness of relative youth, both the original post and this ill-considered follow-up read as if a MAGA grifter was auditioning for a conservative welfare writing gig with TPUSA or the like.

    26. Not sure Dominic went to UPenn. I think he went to Trump U. What he writes in both of his pieces is alien to cognition in general. But he’s done a very good job of modeling himself after Donald Trump. Good channeling job, Dom!

    27. You are so right, Dominic. You know, I just came back from a country where if my parents fell ill with COVID-19 and needed a respirator, they wouldn’t be helped, because they are older than 65. But you are right, what matters most is that we missed out on a few parties. How selfish of the rest of the population.

    28. Holy crap, the irony of THIS guy complaining about “snowflakes…” I’m embarrassed for Penn, and frightened for the world if this is the level of intellectual rigor brought by the next generation. This moron’s ramblings are being circulated among astonished alumni, which begs the question: Do people otherwise even read this reactionary rag?

    29. I have no words for this, so I will let James Baldwin speak for me:

      “Incontestably, alas, most people are not, in action, worth very much; and yet, every human being is an unprecedented miracle. One tries to treat them as the miracles they are, while trying to protect oneself against the disasters they’ve become.”

    30. Everyone does realize, of course, that Donald Trump has a degree from Penn? He’s very proud of it – it’s part of what makes him such a very stable genius.

      Penn sure has enrolled some dunces over the years – and Donald actually graduated. Poor Dominic might not get to do so because his senior year spring semester was stolen and he has a sad.

    31. hahahahaha this is so dumb. Please grow up and get your pathetic, sanctimonious head out of your ass soon. If you don’t, you probably won’t survive the real world once you graduate. Also you can’t write and seem unable to piece together a coherent narrative/argument. I did feel a pretty unique mixture of pity and hatred when I read your stuff, so I guess you accomplished that much.

    32. 10000 deaths in the US. Feels pretty serious now, right? Curious to hear how you feel about Penn’s semester getting cancelled now. Would you still have written that article today? If you would’ve changed it, how?

      Anyways, while I completely disagree with your take in both this and the previous article, I thought some of the reaction and comments were excessively vitriolic. Friends of mine told me you’re a nice dude, and this caught them a little out of left field. I hope that you’re safe, healthy, and maybe considering how you can render your self-label as a ‘privileged asshole’ incorrect.

    33. >>> —COV19 Numbers As of 3/18/2020–
      >>>> 5,881 cases and 107 deaths

      COVID19 Numbers As of 4/7/2020
      367,758 cases and 10,981 deaths

      This is why Fauci is panicking, you douchebag.

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