A View from the Gallery

I had been trying to stay away from writing about this Covid-19 stuff, but finally, I have got to rant a bit…

To start with, let’s look at some CDC numbers. As of January 18, 2020, there have been 15 million cases, 140,000 hospitalizations, and 8,200 deaths from the flu this 2019-2020 season. That’s with a US population in the vicinity of 330 million, and it wasn’t a particularly bad year. Something to think about as this goes on.

As of this writing (Sun April 5th), from the Fox news website there have been 331,234 confirmed cases and 9,458 deaths. And, according to all the “experts and their models”, this next week is going to be really bad. Death toll from Covid way over the 10K mark, just in our country alone. I truly feel for all those families that are going to lose a loved one or have already lost one. This sucks!

However, there is an old adage… If you are not part of the solution, YOU are part of the problem. There are a lot of people out there that are REALLY not happy that DJT is sitting in the big chair, but he IS the one that’s there now. They would rather drag their heels on bills, trash POTUS, make up crap, bend the truth, or just outright lie to make him look bad. Stack layers of bureaucracy on the aid that has already been passed just to make themselves look good. Just in general be “part of the problem”. What the hell, people? Now is the time that we really need to be pulling together to get us through this crisis. Not sniping at each other from the swamp in DC. The TDS is alive and kicking. Some of the pundits have labeled this as this generation’s Pearl Harbor. What they fail to see is that when the original Pearl Harbor happened, our country pulled itself together and faced that crisis as one. Yes, there were problems and conflicts from within, but they were ironed out. We don’t have that luxury of time with this one. We need to quit with the politicization from both sides and do what we need to do to get past this and get our country back up on its feet.

When this is all over and done with, there are some things that we really need to be taking a look at. One — is that most of our meds and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) are made overseas. This pandemic has blatantly shown us that if we have a really bad conflict with the People’s Republic of China, we are going to be in for a rough time getting meds and stuff. It is not a long jump to them holding necessary medical supplies hostage against the US’s “good behavior towards China.”

A second is that our government is woefully under-prepared for a pandemic of any kind. And yes, that includes Federal, State governments and our Medical establishment. This kind of under preparedness is not something that is the fault of just one administration. This kind of foul-up takes decades to create. Very small stock piles of PPE, ventilators etc. Now, I know that we can’t be 100% prepared for every emergency but, we have been flirting with pandemics for decades. SARS, MERS, the list is long. You would have thought that someone somewhere would have told POTUS that we really need to get more of a stockpile of __________. (Fill-in whatever medical equipment/PPE.) I know that this has already happened and was ignored by previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican.

Third is that we need to figure out a way we can deal with a future pandemics without destroying our country’s economy in the process. I completely agree with the President that we need to start getting parts of our economy back in business. Frankly, our world was not built to put “on-hold” for 6 months to a year. 10 million new unemployed in 2 weeks… Can you say recession, anyone?

Thankfully, as far as pandemics go, this is a mild one. I’m not trying to be crass to all those who have lost someone, but looking at the pure numbers, it’s not a truly not a bad one. I’ve heard numbers like .1%-.2% mortality rates and our medical system is hard pressed to handle it. A truly bad one would be 5-10% mortality rate and frankly our current medical system would fold like a house of cards. This is something that when we get done with this and are looking back; we need to get an idea of what needs to be fixed and fix it. Without playing politics with it.

What these Congress critters do not realize is that when they are playing their little political games, people are dying. It’s an election year and I think it is time we reminded them that they work for us, not the other way around.