Robert Wilkie, the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, made a startling declaration on The Steve Gruber Show (part one [1] and two [2] of interview) Tuesday, saying suicides among veterans have fallen to zero since the Covid-19 Pandemic ramped up.
You read that right, zero. The answer was so stunning the question had to be repeated and the response was the same. Wilkie then made this startling statement, “What has been counterintuitive about this epidemic is we haven’t had any veteran suicides that we know of since this thing took hold.”
22 suicides a day has been the ugly reality for veterans in America over the past several years. The gut-wrenching statistic has been the focus of numerous studies and efforts to reduce the number of former service personnel that take their own lives. It seemed to be hard to make an impact.
Then came the Covid-19 pandemic and somehow the silver lining to this dark cloud is the disappearance of the 22 veteran suicides a day. Right now there is no clear answer why this has happened but Secretary Wilkie suggests maybe its because everyone is checking in on each other and maybe that is just enough to keep these folks going.
It is astounding to realize across the entire nation, not one veteran has taken their own life in weeks but let us pray that after we eradicate the virus we can also continue to eradicate the scourge of veterans taking their own lives.