When the flu pandemic hit in 1918 there was no waiting it out for a vaccine and no miracle drugs to fight it. You either got it or you didn’t and you either survived it or you didn’t. People however recognized they were being infected from other people and did what they could to avoid getting it and that included, wearing a mask and being quarantined.
Most of the deaths in America occurred in the second of three waves of the disease when people let down their guard down at the end of the first wave and they weren’t quarantined. There was a war going on and our troops carried the disease to other cities in Europe. It then mutated and they brought it back home. There were lessons for us now to be learned from this pandemic, about spreading disease, but apparently either that was too far in the past to bother reading about it or we already know about the lessons and just chose to do our own thing. Those today who refuse to participate in wearing masks, washing hands and distancing themselves from others, are throwing the rest of us under the bus and they don’t care. Their social lives and their image come first. That’s the reality of living in this country right now.
I am a realist. I deal with the truth and not some pie in the sky hope or rumors that seem to spring up everywhere. I get my information from the writings of scientists and medical people who are in the know and although I’m not always sure the media spins the unvarnished truth, that’s who I have to rely on for getting that information, so it’s not infallible. At any rate I have much more faith in the media then I do in our own government. I have listened to people from both parties and they have politicized this epidemic to fit their campaigns. They don’t care about the truth unless it benefits the party.
If there is one flaw about the United States and its style of governing that sticks out, it is the over confidence that we will overcome whatever befalls us. In the past that has largely been true and it has led to a burying of the truth and a reluctance to talk about or even acknowledge where we went wrong. It comes at us most often in a unrepentive smugness that says we got away with another one. This time however it is a multiprong attack on our way of life that may be tough to recover from. The pandemic has caused us great concern beyond the illness that accompanies it. It has stifled the economy, alienated us from other world countries and caused political turmoil here and around the world. All of this at a time when racial and health care problems that have been kicked down the road for way to long, have boiled to the surface. Couple this with a huge void of leadership from the Whitehouse and we have a perfect storm.
There are counties that so far have weathered the pandemic storm. Their people, far more cooperative then ours, did what was asked of them and it paid off. But that way of life is a bridge to far for our greedy self-centered way of life, so now we suffer. We can let this be the beginning of the end of our country or we can wake up and recognize our failings. It won’t be cured by the present administration or even a new one. It will be cured when we the people resolve to take our country back and do what is right for each other and for our country. Now I ask you to power up your devices and listen to Kate Smiths rendition, of “God Bless America.”
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