How America Could Defeat COVID
America is an incredibly intellectually rich and enterprising country. We have a history of facing the insurmountable and then overcoming it. We beat small pox and then polio by a combination of strong leadership, civil engagement, commonsense and common purpose. But today we as a country lack these four characteristics and we are the poorer for it. Some of us take COVID seriously and make all the sacrifices to challenge it yet so many others ignore the science and the public health which has led to the mountain deaths and disabilities which can result from COVID and even when we get the “MAGIC BULLET” to overcome the virus, we squander it.
Few nations in the world have the vast storehouse of resources to overcome illness, disability and death yet we squander these resources while many resource poor countries are overcoming COVID. Many Asian countries including the Peoples Republic of China and the country of Taiwan, on the two ends of the extreme in every conceivable way, are rallying together as a society and overcoming COVID.
Today, we have the very real fact that COVID is crossing America like a wildfire leaving death and disability, morally depleted health care workers, and economic ruin in its wake. We have an outgoing President who is pouring as much jet fuel as he can on this conflagration, refusing to do ANYTHING to build a firewall around the fire of disease as it burns RUBY RED with death and destruction. He who promised us in Marsh that 15–10 — -5 cases and then it will be all gone. Instead we have 20 million cases, at least 5 million long term health cases of serious health deterioration (many for the natural lives of sufferers and 300,000 empty chairs at the dinner table. Victims of TRUMPS DISEASE include marathoners who can barely walk 5 feet without extreme shortness of breath months after their COVID was “CURED,” Great American Heroes and Creators of American Greatness left dead (from a storied basketball coach and dean of students in a Chicago high school who dies at 57 to one of America’s greatest story tellers musician / composer John Prine who leaves Chicago and Nashville mourning his loss to countless dedicated doctors, nurses, other health professionals and health support staff who essentially died at their posts fighting COVID(wearing the same worn out PPE and masks because the President and his minions first hoarded supplies, then passed out supplies based on their political agenda and then just stopped caring) to thousands of nameless Americans who were important heroes to their friends, co-workers and families but have been relegated to mass graves and just being numbers. This is not how a great country responds to a challenge to its core. Sadly under Donald Trump this has been our fate.
But I talked of “HOW DOES AMERICA DEFEAT C OVID” we as a country have the ability to do just that if our national leadership has the courage to MAKE THIS A WAR and direct ALL of America’s resources to overcoming COVID, doing WHAT EVER IT TAKES TO WIN, NO EXCUSES NO WORRYING ABOUT NATIONAL DEBT, NO WORRIES OF CARRYING OUT POLICIES THAT MIGHT SEEM TO RUN COUNTER TO AMERICAN CAPITALISM. The US did just this to pull itself out of the GREAT DEPRESSION and to overcome NAZISM and FACISM IN WWII and COMMUNISM in the COLD WAR. To defeat COVID we must be brave, bold, committed, willing to sacrifice, and willing to take up common cause to defeat this PANDMIC. Just as we had Eisenhower and Mc Arthur whose leadership defeated Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperialist Japan, we have many great leaders who are here to lead us to overcome COVID such as Anthony Fauci, MD. Politicians and Idealogues must get out of the way of Public Health, Evidence Based Medicine, and good civil administration so that every last sinew of American resources, know how, and spirit of universal good will to beat this virus.
Right now the US has two vaccines that are more effective in protecting persons against COVID than any previous vaccine again any other disease with a third pending FDA approval and at least six in the development pipeline. With less effective vaccines the US eliminated SMALLPOX and POLIO, but the US had resolve and a wartime mentality to stop these more infectious and more deadly killers. How? NATIONAL RESOLVE! There is only one battle, DEFEAT COVID. How can it be that millions of doses of vaccine are being left unused and we have had the initial destruction of unused vaccine that went bad in storage to be given to Americans at risk. In 1956 when POLIO was stopped by the SALK vaccine not a single dose remained on shelves or in a depot. ALL of this lifesaving serum went into the arms of Americans to STOP POLIO COLD. There were NO jet planes, NO FEDEX, NO internet……there was barely national TV. But the message got out and the vaccine got delivered to every corner of American territory. Of course in 1956 America made every thing that was crucial to its dealing with enemies foreign and domestic, America listened to science, America pulled together in common purpose and Americans still remembered that we might disagree about things political, cultural and religious but we all listened to common sense and science and pulled together.
I have many ideas of how we as a nation can pull together to beat COVID. I am going to problem solve and list every idea which I can think of for us to overcome this crisis. I know what I know so that means that there are many more ideas that all of you can think of that I could not imagine. Let this be a start of a chain letter to our different levels of government , social institutions and industry to build a MIGHTY SWIFT SWORD to defeat COVID.
Why is our military standing down? We have upwards of ten million men and women in the active and reserve Armed Forces. We have medical personnel, logistics personnel, administrative personnel, engineering personnel and electronics/computer personnel between the Active, Reserve, Retired, and National Guard Forces. Many Reserve and National Guard personnel are unemployed due to COVID……….unused resources to form a National COVID Relief Corps. There are medics who could be caring for the sick and innoculating, construction engineers who could be building, truck drivers who could be transporting vaccines, PPOE and medical supplies, admin staff stepping in to run COVID relief programs, and computer specialist who could be coordinating all this activity. Add to this the ENTIRE non forward deployed military including two completely staffed 1000 bed Navy Hospital ships. The Army, Navy and Air Force are a vast logistical system that combined with all the grounded commercial airliners to deliver vaccines, PPE and other supplies.
And how about using the Defense Production Act to turn America into an Arsenal of of World Health just as we were the Arsenal of Democracy
How about financial support programs for every American to have money to live on , food to eat and secure housing using the current virtual interest free funds through Federal Reserve borrowing. People could stay at home and isolated without being driven to poverty while we use isolation/stay at home to stop disease transmission
And I could keep going with this challenge, but I’ll stop here and ask, nay DEMAND each American to dig deep and find more solutions and then join together to push every level of government to act to STOP COVID
