This archive report was first published on 6 May 2020.
Make America Immune Again ¶
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, it has become clear that America's immune systems are severely weakened. Over the past 20 years, we have eroded our cognitive, ecological, economic, social, governance, public health, and personal health immune systems, leaving us vulnerable to the virus.
The pandemic has exposed the consequences of our collective societal immunity loss. We have devalued science and reading, bashed public servants for political sport, turned politics into entertainment, and adopted unhealthy eating habits, resulting in 40% of Americans being obese.
One example of this loss of immunity is the incident in Austin, Texas, where a man shoved a park ranger into the water while the ranger was explaining the need for social distancing, as reported by CNN.
Warren Buffett's quote, 'When the tide goes out, you see who's swimming naked,' is particularly relevant in this situation. America is still exceptional, but now it's in the fact that we lead the world in total coronavirus cases and deaths from COVID-19.
Gloria Jackson, a 75-year-old retiree from Minnesota, expressed her concerns about America's current state, saying, 'We were the leading country in everything when I was young. And what are we now? We're mean. We're selfish. We're stubborn and sometimes even incompetent.'
The Republican Party's actions, particularly under Donald Trump's leadership, have contributed significantly to the erosion of our collective societal immunity. Trump's daily fire hose of lies and denunciations of anything he doesn't like as 'fake news' have contributed to the loss of our 'cognitive immunity' – our ability to sort out truth from lies and science from science fiction.
At a time when we need a globally coordinated response to the pandemic, Trump has wrecked every alliance we have. He has also divided us and played everything both ways, which is the opposite of the 'all in this together' approach we need to win this battle.
Dr. Vivek Murthy, Obama's surgeon general, noted that even if we can't be as aggressive as China in terms of surveillance and testing, the truth is, we are at best only 10% of the way there. Simply put, we are behind.
According to Murthy, a strategy of gradually lifting lockdowns based on different risk categories can make sense, but only if every state has in place widely available testing that generates rapid results. The number of tests we are doing is irrelevant unless we can reliably and quickly get a test when and where we need it, and the results can be converted into efficient tracing of others who might be infected.
Murthy suggests the federal government do a version of what China did: rent empty hotels to provide quarantine options to the most vulnerable or those infected and hire some of the massive numbers of unemployed workers to become part of tracing teams in every state under the lead of public health experts.
