Our Crisis
The United States is in crisis, an all-encompassing situation resembling the Great Depression, or World War II. Over half a million Americans are known to have COVID-19, perhaps millions more were infected, and don’t know it. Over 28,000 are known to have died from the disease.
But, because we haven’t developed the testing capacity to know, many more have died from COVID-19, but are listed as dying from heart attacks, or pneumonia, or simply “old age”. The disease is burning through nursing homes and assisted living centers. For many there, the only “remedy” given is to sign a “DNR”, a do-not-resuscitate order. Hospice care may be their only medical treatment. To quote an old Republican, “We don’t know what we don’t know”.
The economy of the United States is literally closed. Twenty-two million Americans are seeking unemployment benefits. Economists estimate that the unemployment rate, at three percent as recently as February, will climb to twenty percent this month. Many are clamoring to “re-open” the economy, regardless of the health consequences. They say that the impact of keeping the economy closed weighs greater than the deaths that opening it may cause.
Logic of Death
It’s a cold-blooded logic, a willingness to sacrifice others to end personal economic suffering. Of course it’s wrong, but more importantly, it’s Un-American. We cannot, or at the least, we must not, build a new economy on the deaths of the old, and the sick, and the unlucky. What will our children say – thanks for starting the economy and sacrificing grandma and grandpa? We must not climb on the bodies of those dead to end our financial distress and our discomfort with social distancing.
There are solutions. Many of the state Governors are working on them, developing how to weather the pandemic, and then re-open their businesses. Those Governors unanimously are calling for a strategy of containment: testing for the disease, quarantining the infected, and allowing those that are immune or disease free to go forward. Testing and tracing is the answer for all, except the President of the United States.
Distract and Deflect
The President is bent on distracting the nation from that particular subject, testing. On Monday he spent hours attacking the media. Tuesday in the Rose Garden, he tried to place blame for the pandemic on the World Health Organization. On Wednesday, shivering back outdoors, he blamed Senate Democrats for not approving his personnel requests, and threatened a Constitutional crisis with the Legislative branch. As if anyone believes having an acting director of the Voice of America is preventing him from dealing with the crisis.
We know that Mr. Trump was let down by many of his “friends” in the business community. The top executives the Administration who were included as part of the “start-up committee” didn’t know that they were invited, and many don’t want to join in. And of the ones who are willing to participate, many are warning that a start-up followed by a shutdown because of a rise in infection is worse than no start-up at all. Most Governors are saying the same thing: too soon is worse than waiting.
So Trump picks a fight with three “popular” targets: the New York Times, the World Health Organization, and, of course, the Democrats in the Senate. All familiar targets, and all far off the point of what our nation needs to do now.
Solutions not Distractions
We have the technology to make all of this work. Just as we built thousands of ventilators in weeks, we could do the same with blood testing machines. And while in the “old days” health “detectives” had to do contact tracing, we can now do it through technology. Yes, the health department would have to access your cell phone, and THEY would know if you had COVID, or contacted someone who did. “BIG BROTHER IS NOW” the civil libertarians cry out, and I get their concern.
But we allow Facebook, and Google, and hundreds of other private businesses access to all of our personal concerns. Kroger knows when I walk in the store, they tell me on my phone. Facebook sends me ads for men’s clothing and used RV’s. Google has my online sales records. If we are giving all that information to them for marketing purposes, why in the world wouldn’t we give the Health Department access to our COVID-19 status? If that’s what it takes to control this pandemic, it’s worth the “risk”.
Should we as a nation fail to test and contain, then we face a stark choice. If we open, we make the immoral choice of sacrificing others for our financial wellbeing. Or we stay closed, socially distanced, until we have a vaccine.
Then the “anti-vaxxers” can have their crazy say.
