Tag: coronavirus

Coronavirus, Domestic Policy

Coronavirus – Some Positive News

Bob Claude |

No nation can be great unless its sons and daughters have in them the quality to rise level to the needs of heroic days.

World War I Homefront Poster with Quote from Theodore Roosevelt. 

These are heroic days and call for all kinds of heroism from Americans. The vast majority of us are hopefully following official directions to stay home and practicing the new mantra of social distancing. Meanwhile, public safety, health and grocery workers are reminding us that heroism is often found in simply doing the ordinary extraordinarily well.  While the news may be grim now, there are some green shoots of hope out there.

The Guardian, a British newspaper, is regularly publishing a state by state breakdown of coronavirus cases in the United States here. It is updated daily  and shows bar graphs depicting the number of new cases over the previous five days by state. While the national number continues to climb at a worryingly geometric rate,  the bar graphs on the right of the chart indicate that Washington state may already be flattening the curve of infection. You may remember that it started testing and instituted radical social distancing earlier than the rest of the country.  Unfortunately, the rates in New York and the rest of the country are increasing, but the apparent success on the West Coast gives us hope that the current limitations may be working as intended.  

This MarketWatch site has a list of the 15 companies or groups that are working on either a treatment or a vaccine. A lot is going on behind the scenes to bring us to the point where we have the pharmaceutical tools necessary to treat or prevent infections and thus end the need for quarantines. However, any such treatment will need to undergo basic testing for safety and effectiveness. 

Finally, a group of Irish engineers invented an open source method for 3d printing of a ventilator. Together with the commitment of some American manufacturers to dedicate production to this need, it offers a way to close the gap in the medical resources needed to treat serious COVID-19 cases and reduce the fatality rate. 

I encourage you to remember TR’s comment about what makes great nations.  Like our fathers and grandfathers during the two world wars, we can make a difference on our own home fronts. Let’s do it!

Coronavirus, Domestic Policy

Coronavirus – America’s Moment

Bob Claude |

O my fellow citizens, each one of you carries on your shoulders not only the burden of doing well for the sake of your own country, but the burden of doing well and of seeing that this nation does well for the sake of mankind. 

Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism, August 31, 1910

The measures outlined by President Trump to control the spread of the coronavirus at his March 16 news conference certainly are drastic and disruptive. However, a recent article on the medium.com website (https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca) presented both a statistically comprehensive and horrifying prediction of the public health crisis we may be facing as soon as April if we do not stem the tide of COVID-19 cases. As of today, there are 6496 confirmed cases with 112 deaths.  The number of cases are thus matching the hyperbolic increase that the article predicted.  

This crisis challenges not only each of us personally, but also the democratic model that inspired the world from the days of the American Revolution.  As Americans, we need to pull together and help our country triumph over this challenge and show how a free people can unify to defeat it. In addition to the precautions announced on March 16, here are some other things to consider. 

The article warns that our current health care infrastructure may quickly be overwhelmed by  serious COVID-19 cases.  To close this gap, people who are otherwise healthy should consider making themselves available to volunteer at hospitals and other facilities to assist health care professionals.  Another alternative is to provide child care for health care workers whose children are at home alone due to school cancellations or extended work hours. You could also become a delivery driver helping to deliver food to mild home bound COVID-19 sufferers.   Employers should support such volunteerism from those currently working from home and universities should encourage students to participate. Churches, state and local authorities could help by establishing easily-accessible on-line lists of potential volunteers.  Hopefully, we will  have distributed enough tests by then to clear those volunteers.  In any case, each of us will have to evaluate our ability to positively contribute to the response. 

In his book Democracy in America, the French author Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the unique spirit of volunteerism he saw in his travels around the country. China is attempting to hide the early mistakes of its response by touting the later success of its heavy-handed totalitarian controls. They hope to use this to promote their form of government as a model for the world. In fact, they engaged in a four-month coverup of the outbreak because, like most dictators, they are inherently afraid of the truth. This cost thousands of Chinese lives and delayed an effective world response.  We must counter Chinese propaganda by showing that a free nation like America can be demonstrably more successful in dealing with such a crisis. Now more than ever, the future of our American values and model of government is up to each of us. 

Coronavirus, Domestic Policy

Coronavirus – A Challenge to All Americans

Bob Claude |

Controlling the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic will require Americans to unify behind measures necessary to achieve victory over the disease. Panic is unnecessary, simply because America knows how to rise to this challenge and has overcome similar ones in the past.  

This article from the Scientific American magazine’s website (https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/preparing-for-coronavirus-to-strike/) is both a helpful primer on the epidemiology of the disease and a call to Americans to make the sacrifices necessary to control it.  While the data is still insufficient, it appears that COVID-19 is generally as contagious as the flu, though its 2% fatality rate is higher. This higher fatality rate means as many as  2-4 million Americans could die without a coordinated response. The key to preventing this scale of tragedy lies in reducing the number of infections by practicing the basic precautions described in the article and by isolating those infected for the two-week period during which they are infectious.  Some public gatherings and events may need to be canceled to avoid inadvertent spread of the disease.  Employers will have to allow employees to work from home or provide paid sick leave during recovery to provide the job security to encourage them to stay home.  Thankfully, many large employers already have such contingency plans developed a decade ago to prepare for a potential bird flu epidemic.  Epidemiologists call this “flattening the curve” of the spread, which avoids overwhelming hospitals with patients, allows the authorities to develop supporting infrastructure and gives medicine sufficient time to find and adequately test a vaccine.   

This kind of community response must be supported by a coordinated effort by the federal government to develop the weapons we need to defeat the virus. An article from the DefenseOne website outlines the military-style program necessary to develop those weapons. See https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/02/federal-government-should-go-war-coronavirus-today/163401/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl.  The appointment of Vice-President Pence to lead the response is a good first start.  Both articles point out that one of our most important weapons is information.  Americans need full and frequent updates on the disease and the work of community, national and international organizations fighting against it.  For example, the development of a vaccine is being led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), an international consortium of university research centers and biotechnology firms whose goal is to develop a vaccine for a new disease within 16 weeks of its identification.  They have already rough drafts of applications for approval and testing of a coronavirus vaccine to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other nation’s drug regulatory agencies. CEPI represents the best form of globalization – an alliance of private groups focused on positive solutions of  a specific issue, but subject to the policies of each nation-state. You can follow their work at https://cepi.net/.    

Thus, all of the societal, medical, scientific and governmental resources are in place to protect our country from the worst of the COVID-19 epidemic.  We know how to do it and have successfully done it in the past.  The photo at the beginning of this post is of Dr. William C. Gorgas, the Army doctor and chief medical officer of the Panama Canal construction project tasked by Theodore Roosevelt to battle against the yellow fever and malaria that had defeated the French construction effort.  He used military style tactics to control the mosquitoes carrying the diseases and enabled the United States to complete a project that others only dreamed about. (See https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/this-army-doctor-made-the-panama-canal-possible-by-killing-mosquitoes   The same unified commitment and community spirit can prevail once again in the fight against COVID-19.