February 2, 2021

I like to think that there is hope but sometimes that is a hard hill to climb in the face of watching some of the lunacy that is going on in this country in which the death toll from the COVID pandemic has surpassed 440,000 people and is still rising to the tune of about 3,000 people a day.   And now, there are more contagious and perhaps more deadly variants of this virus propagating around the world.  It is absolutely beyond me why this is so difficult to understand for some segments of the population.

So much of this is just about following the data and having some basic understanding of how things work.  Unfortunately, wishful thinking does not work very well when combatting a virus.  Biden’s task force has stated that this is really a race against time and the facts should be enough to get anyone’s attention.   However, for some, that just seems like a bridge too far.

Viruses mutate.  That is a fact.  That is what they do.  And the more they replicate, the higher the probability that a new variant will emerge that is 1) more contagious, 2) more resistant to our current vaccines, 3) has a higher mortality rate than previous versions of the virus or 4) affects a different segment of the population more aggressively than before, e.g., children and young adults.  That is one of the main reasons to slow or stop the spread of the virus.  Certainly, we need to be focused on saving lives at risk due to the current virus.  However, in some respects, limiting its ability to replicate and evolve into variants that cause us even more problems is of even more urgency. 

If the virus were static, then timing would not be nearly so critical.  However, viruses are not anywhere close to being static.   Right now, there are over 103 MILLION reported cases worldwide and over 26 MILLION cases in the United States.  Every single one of those cases represent an opportunity for the virus to replicate into a mutant variant that has attributes that can cause us more problems.   That is why there is such urgency to slow down the spread of this virus.  And that is why it is so damned frustrating to see people (and politicians) fighting mask rules, fighting social distancing rules and trying to limit the authority of public health officials based upon wishful thinking and arm waving that has no basis in scientific fact.  It just reflects the lack of a basic understanding of the enemy we are up against.  That lack of understanding translates into real lives lost.

The previous administration’s lack of bold, decisive action at the Federal level got us into this mess and it will take bold, decisive action to get us out of this mess.  The Biden administration is doing the right things by putting medical and scientific experts in charge again and by trying to bring the full force of the US government to bear on this crisis.   Biden is trying to get bipartisan buy-in on his COVID relief plan of $1.9 trillion but is running into a roadblock from Congressional Republicans.  Ten Republican senators have offered a package of $600 million and talk of the need for compromise and unity.  It is hard to understand how they have all of a sudden gotten religion on fiscal responsibility when they let the national debt sky rocket under Trump – even before the pandemic!  This is not the time for half-assed actions.  This is a crisis and the cost to the country of not getting this virus under control soon will be far greater than $1.9 trillion being proposed in the Biden package.

The previous administration tried a half-assed approach to managing the virus a year ago and the entire country has suffered way more than it should have.  We have 4 percent of the world’s population and over 20 percent of the world’s confirmed cases.  We have over twice as many cases and three times as many deaths as our next closest ‘competitor’, India, which, by the way, has a population that is three times the size of that of the United States.  It is long past time to hit this pandemic with everything this country can bring to bear and the Republicans need to understand that trying to slow down this COVID relief package or underfund it is just going to prolong the agony and cost American lives.

If one were cynical, one might think that the reluctance of some Republicans to get behind aggressive measures to stop this pandemic and rev up the economy, is simply because they don’t want Biden to be successful in getting this pandemic under control and reviving the economy because that would hurt the Republican election chances in 2022 and 2024.   One would hate to think that people could put politics ahead of the health and well being of ‘we the people,’ but I guess we’ve all learned that isn’t always the case.  This is a crisis and needs to be treated as a crisis which will require bold, decisive action.  Anything less will likely be disastrous. 

This is really a problem in basic math and basic science.  If you look at the numbers and you believe the science then the decisions on what to do, are pretty straightforward.  If you ignore the data and you don’t believe in the science, that’s where hope gets lost.   At that point its just a roll of the dice as to who lives and who dies.  Let’s hope that the nation can collectively muster the will power to turn what is now sounding like a funeral dirge into a symphony of hope as we move forward.  We have put men on the moon – we should sure as hell be able to figure this out!