COVID-19 is a virus that threatens every person in this
country and potentially every person in the world. While not a visible army, we can very much
consider ourselves under attack and the leaders of every country are under an
obligation to do the best they can to protect their people.
I happen to think that our President is doing a fantastic
job. He has assembled a team of experts
to advise him, led by the very competent Vice President. President Trump has coordinated and brought
together the resources that are available to him, has brought private industry and
their innovation and resources into the mix, he has gotten our Congress to
begin to work bipartisanly for the good of the people instead of
themselves. The President has acted decisively
and quickly and in so doing has likely lessened at least somewhat the spread
and effects of the epidemic in this country.
He continues to act as he daily consults with his experts and the new
information that they daily gain about the virus.
The President is working for the people of the country. Many of those people are also working
selflessly for their fellow Americans.
And those that are not a part of critical services, those that have been
asked to social distance and not go out for non-essential reasons can and
should also do their part for America against this invisible enemy. Many are; sadly, some are not.
This virus can be asymptomatic – a person can have the virus
and be able to infect others without feeling any symptoms themselves. We should all consider ourselves carriers,
and the best way to lessen the spread of the virus is for us all, then, to
avoid going out in public where we, or our touch on tables, door handles, etc.,
can possibly spread the virus to others.
To go out, when we do not have to, is to put our fellow Americans at risk.
Yet too many seem to believe that it is about them, not
others. They are not sick, so why not go
out. They think they are healthy and won’t
get sick, so why not go out. There is no
concern for the less healthy others who might indeed get sick or die from the
virus that they might spread. The part
that most Americans are being asked to play is nothing like the burdens that Americans
have suffered together in times of war (ask your parents/grandparents about the
second world war!). We are simply being
asked to stay in and away from others as much as possible. Not a big sacrifice, yet still some are not
willing to take it.
For some, it is just a matter of changing their usual social
behaviors. For others – small business
people for example, it may be a bigger sacrifice as they close their doors for
2 or 3 weeks, lay off their employees, and lose revenue. Yes, that is a big deal. Yet the President and Congress are passing
and have passed a series of bills that will in large part alleviate the
losses. This President will forget no
one, and we Americans need to trust that he and Congress together will keep us
whole.
So, we the people can and should all pull together and each
of us do our part for the good of our neighbors and our country. We need to put self-interest and
self-centeredness aside and begin thinking of the many others with whom we are
in this together.
But there is another group I would like to address, and that
is those who continue to see this as a political goldmine. First, let me say that I am impressed in the
last few days with the bipartisanship that has surfaced in Washington as the
Congress and the White House seem to be, for the most part working
together. While realistically I suspect
this will not continue once we have won the current war against the virus, I
would like to hope that at least a small
part of it will in some way remain and evolve into something both positive and
permanent.
But then there are others.
At a time when we need to be working together, I read about a Democrat
PAC that plans to spend five million on ads attacking President Trump’s
handling of the epidemic even as we are in the middle of the crisis. When
people are already balking or not understanding the need to follow the
CDC/White House guidelines which are clearly necessary to attack and slow this
virus, why would a group choose to try to make people question the President’s
actions that include issuing those guidelines?
This most recent PAC is not alone in its actions. There are other PACs taking similar
actions. Biden and Sanders have not held
back in their attacks on how the President is handling the crisis. And of
course the Press, even at the daily White House press briefings, latches onto
and furthers these attacks.
There will be plenty of time to attack the President and his
actions once this crisis is over. It
will be over a lot sooner if we let the President and his experts continue
their thus far effective strategies rather than trying to convince the American
people that he is incompetent or doesn’t care about this or them, or whatever
lies they are trying to spread.
On NPR this morning they were focusing on problems with
testing from weeks ago and letting people complain about the incompetence of
the system as if it were today. To be
clear, doctors and experts have emphatically stated that problems with testing
at the beginning were not the fault of Trump or the CDC, but of a system in
place that did not work for this sort of epidemic. Since then, the President has revamped the
system and partnered with private industry to create quicker and faster tests and
make them available to all who need them.
Let’s applaud that rather than whine about a problem that has already
been handled.
And, as to those tests, not every single American needs one
and if every American demands the certainty of knowing they do/do not have the virus
they will only clog the system. People
who need tests can get them. Let the system
work.
The Press often attacks because they get information today
that was not given yesterday or perhaps conflicts with earlier
information. Well, the information that
we have about the virus is evolving hourly as the experts have more data to
analyze and more cases to review. Trump’s
team is doing this, informing him, and hence he has new and sometimes different
information to provide. This is not a
bad thing.
But then, if you are Donald Trump, too often in the eyes of
the Press you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. For example, he was criticized for his early
decisive action to stop incoming flights from China. There is no dispute that this early decisive
action greatly reduced the threat in our country. When he could no longer be criticized for
closing the borders, he was then criticized for not doing it soon enough. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. And certainly not helpful in a time of
crisis.
Then there are the repeated attacks because the President (and
others) call this the Chinese Virus.
Hey, it came from China. If it
came from America it would be an American virus. Those are facts. Calling the virus Chinese is not racist, even
if there were no other reason for doing so.
But, besides it being a factual statement, it counters a propaganda campaign
waged by China that it was American soldiers who brought the virus to China. It emphasizes the falsity of that Chinese
propaganda. That is not racist and
attempts to make it so are simply attempts to divide the country when we should
be trying to bring everyone together with the common goal of defeating this
viral enemy.
When a country is under attack, when it is at war, it is a
time for the people to pull together for the common good and the good of their
country. They become less self-centered
and more concerned with the greater good.
Most Americans are doing this now.
But there are those who are not in this together with the rest of us,
who simply see this crisis as an opportunity to further their own selfish
interests. While I hope the American
people can and will recognize this, that task becomes harder when one of those
who is not pulling together but instead participates in the sowing of seeds of
dissention is the Press. We get our information
from the Press and its ability to objectively approach and report news is
crucial to our ability to understand a crisis and each do our part to help
resolve it.
There are those who have been trying to pull this country
apart for several years now. Their continuing
such actions in a time of crisis should prove to all that they do not care
about our country or any of us, its people, but instead only care about their
own agendas and their own power. They
can only hurt us.
But, to the many Americans who do believe that we are all in
this together, who are doing their part in our war against the Coronavirus, I
applaud you for your sacrifices, be they great or small. Thank you for understanding the war we are
in, for listening to our leaders and experts, for following the guidelines,
even as they evolve, and for protecting not only yourself but your neighbors as
well. If we all pull together we will
beat this thing sooner rather than later, so let’s just ignore those disrupters
who are not in this with us.
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