The extent of our country’s social and political failings has been starkly brought to light by our pathetic response to the coronavirus. Right now we are a sad people.
The U.S. has less than 5% of the world’s population, but has nearly 30% of the Covid-19 deaths. This one fact documents for the world the fundamental failure of our society. Unfortunately, we ourselves don’t seem to realize the profoundly negative significance of these statistics.
Our political system has failed to protect us. Just like the 9/11 terrorist attack, advance warnings of impending disaster were ignored by our federal government, the disaster that could have been avoided occurred unimpeded, and our response has been to blame the Democrats, the Republicans, the Chinese, anyone else but ourselves. Our strategic stockpiles of PPE were hopelessly inadequate, our domestic testing procedures failed miserably, our travel restrictions were instituted too late, and we wasted at least a month pretending that everything was under control when there were actually no controls or plan in place.
Our economy has failed to protect us. We are being told that no one realized the extent of our reliance on foreign countries to supply us with raw, partially-finished, and finished goods, but in reality our large corporations knew, the commerce department of the federal government knew, and anyone who shopped in Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Wayfair, Overstock, etc. and bothered to read the labels that identified country of origin knew. At some level we all knew, but from what I can tell, very few of us were concerned.
Our people are failing to protect us from ourselves. A few parts of the country have been able to moderate the spread of the coronavirus through lengthy stay-at-home periods, but the rest of the country does not seem to think that this is important. Many are resuming their normal way of life without concern for basic protective measures like wearing a mask and practicing social distancing. The federal government has issued science-based recommendations for safely reopening our economy, and far too many states have promptly ignored the recommendations in favor of placating a minority of selfish, ignorant people who have no concept of social responsibility.
Here is what is going to happen. The country’s economy will open up and people will go back to work. People will continue to become sick with the coronavirus, but 95% will survive with minimal symptoms, with others surviving after suffering through the illness and recovery. We will need to protect our most vulnerable citizens such as older people and those with underlying health issues by limiting their involvement in society, because otherwise they will become infected and many will die. We will experience a second wave of coronavirus later in the fall and we will try to downplay it, but in the end the deaths due to coronavirus will certainly exceed 150,000 and may approach 250,000 before we develop improved treatments for the most vulnerable and possibly a vaccine for all of us.
So if we are the greatest nation on earth, with the world’s best health care system, why are we so pathetic, and why are we not doing something about it?