Our nation is heading in the right direction but is it enough?
What the hell?
It’s April 1. Happy Fool’s Day?
No.
I weep as I write this while watching CNN’s Chris Cuomo — himself infected with Covid-19 — interview the late Dr. Frank Gabrin’s now-widowed husband Arnold Vargas and friend Debra Vaselech Lyons on his segment tonight from home. Himself in quarantine in his basement.
The New Jersey doctor — both a survivor of cancer, twice over, and exposed to Covid-19 through his work — died in his husband Vargas’ arms before paramedics could even arrive.
Also today, but earlier, was a press conference with President Trump administration’s coronavirus response team.
During the conference, a graphic on an easel was present aside from most speakers on the dais.
There was a dark, steeply rising peak — what the United States of America will face if we do not “mitigate” and attempt to truly control Covid-19’s expansion.
Then there was the light-blue mound — not a small mound, but a mound — that represented predictions for the U.S. if the nation as a whole acted as one and tried to stop the spread of the potentially fatal virus.
So, why isn’t the entire nation under a stay-at-home lockdown?
The states of Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming haven’t put forth such restrictions yet. Texas did so only on March 31.
In response to a question about why every governor in the nation hasn’t issued a stay-at-home order or a national order declared by the Trump Administration — as the scientists on his own response team suggest — the president said, “States are different.”
Sure, they look different, have different customs and so on, but one thing remains the same: they are populated by humans.
If we don’t — and with the current administration, I’m pretty sure we won’t — go into a full nationwide lockdown, we can expect to see that dark, steeply rising peak of a prediction come to fruition.
