COVID-19: The Silver Lining
Imagine, if you will, a cycle of country sequestration where every six to nine months children are asked to stay home from school, businesses are required to shut their doors, and our medical community cries for inadequate funding. Imagine a country where electricity is shut off because of the potential of fires. Imagine a country where homes are repossessed by banks who have extended credit to buyers prior to pandemics and our streets are filled with the unemployed, not the homeless, the hard-working Americans who built our country. We are Americans who sailed across an ocean risking scurvy, starvation, and depredation to create a new nation based on the principles of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have fought wars against tyranny, in favor of liberty for all, and defended the freedom of people around the world so that they too could enjoy the fruits of their labors.
COVID-19 is an exclamation point at the end of a long sentence that describes the relinquishment of individual liberty in order to attain security from a central authority. Disasters will come and go. They will be fought on the fields of war, in the domains of science, in outer space, in our kitchens, in our stores, and on the political battlefield. The biggest disaster in our lifetime is being fought not outside ourselves but in our hearts. What our forefathers had, that we still have but have forgotten, is faith in themselves and those they surrounded themselves with. In our case, we must surround ourselves with fellow countrymen who believe that they are capable, that their neighbor is just, and that together they can forge a better future for themselves and their children.
We are the hardest working, most caring people in the world. We do not shirk responsibility or claim that our welfare is the domain of someone else. We build highways, and dams, and riverways, and cities with clean water for all. We educate our children, offer kindness to strangers, and serve our families and friends. Some of us will always die, and generally, it is the old and weak. It is a sadness that we cannot conquer but we can usher in death with dignity and kindness. We cannot afford to prolong life for 3 months at the expense of all those who have worked so hard to create a future for their children and their neighbors. We cannot afford to shut down our country to avoid the pain and sorrow of loss. Rather, we must do all those everyday rituals that preserve life and dignity for all. We must:
- Be thankful for our freedom
- Preserve it with responsibility
- Trust our neighbors
- Wash our hands
- Cough into our elbows
- Clean our homes
- Respect personal space
- Stay home when we are sick
- Buy things from the people we know
- Accept help from those we know
- Help those we can
- Solve the problems today not the problems tomorrow
- Learn and build and love life so that others can too
COVID-19 has taught us that when we spend our time on a future that may never happen such as saving the world from global warming we are foregoing the present dangers that are imminent. Pandemics are not thwarted by centralized government actions but by the common sense of the people that make up a country. We avoid disasters now by understanding where the real risks are and by encouraging individual responsibility while affording others the respect of their opinions and capabilities. COVID-19 is our wake up call. We can turn our lives over to an authoritarian regime that dictates our behavior and sequesters us every 6 months or we can focus on being responsible for ourselves and our neighbors by working hard and believing that we as a nation do not have to be beholden to insurance companies for payments, medical establishments for resources, pharmacies for drugs, food suppliers for health, banks for money, the legal system for justice, and government for local security. We can pass laws that allow companies without medical degrees to provide IVs and address in-home care. We can provide accurate and effective diagnoses through remote monitoring and AI without a doctor’s prescription or a high price tag. We can create industries that make our own drugs without billion-dollar price tags enforced by the FDA rules and regulations. We can build clean, working, effective cities without massive redistribution from central authorities. We the people can choose to live a life that is awarded us by the principles by which this country was founded; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The best of life to all of you. May your life be filled with joy and dignity.
