Letter to the Editor 11/12
Editor:
In August/September, We Were Getting Down To 40,000 Covid Cases Daily. Yesterday We Had 131,780 and cases continue to rise.
While we were preoccupied with the election, the Pandemic was and is running rampant and unchecked through this country. Hospitalizations are soaring and hospitals are now or becoming overwhelmed. Refrigerated semi trailers are parked outside hospitals again. Just because this isn’t being covered on TV every day doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
This is happening because Trump and his “Task Force” gave up fighting long ago and is just going to let the virus spread freely causing thousands more Americans become infected and die. England with an equally conservative PM, Boris Johnson, just imposed a 4-week nation-wide shutdown. When presented with the scenario of their hospitals becoming overwhelmed, he had to bow to public pressure and the facts.
None of that is happening here where Trump continued to hold dozens of his superspreader events all over the country and non-social distanced events at the White House, infecting thousands of citizens as well as his own White House and family.
Joe Biden has actually been getting briefed by the leading public health officials for months and is already assembling a Covid Task Force which will take DECISIVE ACTION on a nationwide scale to establish testing, contact tracing, and sensible social distancing measures, including mask-wearing.
If you want to be successful in any area of life, learn what other successful people are doing and emulate that. These are the things countries like New Zealand, Taiwan, and even Canada who have more successfully handled the pandemic have done and continue to do. And they are the things the experienced epidemiologists have been screaming for us to do for nine months.
For those promoting the either/or scenario where we have to choose between getting the pandemic under control and repairing the economy, it has already been painfully demonstrated that we can’t get the economy back to where it was without first getting the virus under better control than we have now. It was obvious that states that opened up their businesses too soon were the ones where the virus re-surged. The virus doesn’t care about our “economy.” The president demanded schools re-open simply because he wanted to but he did not provide schools with the funding to change classroom configurations that would MAKE those schools safer for children. You have to do BOTH. The result is that millions of children are STILL out of school. The same goes for the workplace and businesses offering a service.
The sad part, however, is that we don’t know how many more of our fellow Americans will be infected, hospitalized, and die from this disease between now and January 20. All WE can do individually is practice what most of us have been doing and have worked for us this far: 1.) Avoid heterogenous groups and crowds of people who are not in our core family unit. 2.) Wear a mask whenever around other people, when we go out shopping for food, to the doctor, pharmacy, etc. 3.) Keep at least 6 feet between ourselves and others. 4.) Wash our hands for at least 20 seconds after handling objects when out, deliveries, mail, etc. 5.) Don’t touch our faces when out, touching objects, shopping, etc.
Please remember that we are doing these things as much to protect others including our friends and family as ourselves. It has to work both ways for it to work.
William E. Conti, PhD
Honolulu, HI
