I walked into work this morning with birds singing on a sunny morning and flowers sprouting near the patio. It is an odd juxtaposition to experience a beautiful spring day in the middle of a pandemic where feelings of anxiety and grief are creeping in.
The same can be said about the news. Hospital officials are scrambling to prepare for the worst-case scenario and within days or weeks, they will know if we face a Cat 1 or Cat 5 biological hurricane. If you can help sew masks, then please do this to help your local healthcare system. Here is a guide.
Through the news, signs of hope are emerging.
Between warmer weather, the incredible efforts from the medical, manufacturing, and pharmaceutical sectors, and social distancing and quarantines, it is my hope that we will be spared the fate of Italy and China.
Within the week, massive amounts of testing will be in our local areas for free which means we can just isolate those with COVID-19 and begin getting back to work. When we have really good news like a drug that stops it or full testing across the country, we will open back up and the markets will pop. People will go back to work and the economy will resume. Hang tight and be hopeful.
When this is over, the leaders through this crisis will be the big and small businesses and their employees (us) that sacrificed a lot financially to make this shorter and less deadly within America.
On the flip side, it is disappointing that it has to threaten America before our private industries will go to the extreme to save the lives of humans. That being said, Lilly, GM, Tesla, and the private labs currently working around the clock to build tests, drugs, and ventilators to flatten the curve are full of heroic individuals trying to build capacity. Shutdowns to this magnitude wouldn’t have been necessary if we had done this a lot sooner, and that falls on the government sector due to their dysfunction and inability to lead.
Big things can happen when the human race applies its varied expertise to a single problem through peaceful and voluntary cooperation. The message from this ought to be clear: Organizing society through government does not help, it makes things worse, and we can do better without it.
