You’ve given up before you’ve even began (believe me, I know that feeling).

But don’t let your paralysis leak out to other people. If you see someone taking baby steps to make this world better, you be their cheerleader. You give them your energy so that they can take bigger strides.

And who knows, maybe in the process you’ll have taken your first baby steps too.

Edit: as pointed out below, these numbers are for type 1 and 2, so the population is requiring insulin is much lower than this.

Among the U.S. population overall, crude estimates for 2021 were:

• 38.4 million people of all ages—or 11.6% of the U.S. population—had diabetes.

• 38.1 million adults aged 18 years or older—or 14.7% of all U.S. adults—had diabetes (Table 1a; Table 1b).

https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/php/data-research/index.html

Sure, the majority of folks don't have diabetes, but come on, this affects a huge number of people, and I would bet that a vast, vast majority of people at least know someone with diabetes.

And yes, those are national whereas this is California---but it's also about changing hearts and minds. When someone from Texas, struggling to pay for their kid's insulin, learns about this, they might just question some things.

Sometimes that may be true but neurologically, empathy is often driven by experience and most people have a relative with diabetes and many people have a diabetic relative who struggles financially with it. This would be hard to demonize.