“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana
If we had learned from history, as the 1918 flu reveals, we would know that they came to find out that they took the benefits from social distancing too lightly and completely abolished it too soon and experienced a 2nd wave that was much worse than the first.
It is one thing to open up the economy carefully and social distance as much as possible to slow the spread and provide time for the development of treatments and a vaccine to save many lives.
It is quite another thing to demand the right to gather in large groups for social activities and completely let down our guard in disregard of the many lives it will cost for not taking the precautions seriously.
The worst thing seems to be that so many are basing their reasoning according to divisive hyper partisan rhetoric because it promotes pure irrational defiance of not protecting the rights of the all the people and ignores the middle ground that we must do both, keep the economy open and slow the spread.
I sometimes wonder how far this might go and how bad it might get because of the political divisiveness in this country. I often pray that God gives us mercy and does not give us what we probably deserve for the lack of caring for the rights of our fellow man no matter which side you are on.
We will either work together responsibly to slow the spread and keep the economy going or we fail to do so together. If some use their “rights to choose” to ignore our national plan others will have no choice because the virus doesn't give choice, the virus uses everyone it can to infect whoever it can. Breaking the law and protesting for things like to congregate at the beach, attend concerts and other large group social activities is nothing to be proud of and it is certainly not patriotic, it is the opposite, is selfishly jumping on a hyper partisan bandwagon that is likely to increase the problem and denying others the right to be safe. It is an immoral and necessary thing to do. Likewise, bringing the economy down to a point that people start to starve can be just as bad, where only those with the means to feed themselves will be able to survive and others are not afforded that right. My point, which will probably be ignored, is that there has to be middle ground and we have to/should be working together rather than focusing on partisan divisions to come to our conclusions and actions.
Maybe there will come a time when the partisan narratives will be examined more sanely as to not repeat the failures of the past, that would be my hope, but what I am hoping not to see at this point is that we are setting ourselves up to be in line to dramatically teach this country a lesson on why we should have worked together because of a devastating 2nd wave that will increase the divisiveness and cost us all more than we than we ever would have needed to pay.
I really hope to be wrong, but I can not ignore that a reality check might be coming through a 2nd wave that is going to cause some soul searching before we finally develop the resources to ultimately defeat COVID-19.
Example:
If we had learned from history, as the 1918 flu reveals, we would know that they came to find out that they took the benefits from social distancing too lightly and completely abolished it too soon and experienced a 2nd wave that was much worse than the first.
It is one thing to open up the economy carefully and social distance as much as possible to slow the spread and provide time for the development of treatments and a vaccine to save many lives.
It is quite another thing to demand the right to gather in large groups for social activities and completely let down our guard in disregard of the many lives it will cost for not taking the precautions seriously.
The worst thing seems to be that so many are basing their reasoning according to divisive hyper partisan rhetoric because it promotes pure irrational defiance of not protecting the rights of the all the people and ignores the middle ground that we must do both, keep the economy open and slow the spread.
I sometimes wonder how far this might go and how bad it might get because of the political divisiveness in this country. I often pray that God gives us mercy and does not give us what we probably deserve for the lack of caring for the rights of our fellow man no matter which side you are on.
We will either work together responsibly to slow the spread and keep the economy going or we fail to do so together. If some use their “rights to choose” to ignore our national plan others will have no choice because the virus doesn't give choice, the virus uses everyone it can to infect whoever it can. Breaking the law and protesting for things like to congregate at the beach, attend concerts and other large group social activities is nothing to be proud of and it is certainly not patriotic, it is the opposite, is selfishly jumping on a hyper partisan bandwagon that is likely to increase the problem and denying others the right to be safe. It is an immoral and necessary thing to do. Likewise, bringing the economy down to a point that people start to starve can be just as bad, where only those with the means to feed themselves will be able to survive and others are not afforded that right. My point, which will probably be ignored, is that there has to be middle ground and we have to/should be working together rather than focusing on partisan divisions to come to our conclusions and actions.
Maybe there will come a time when the partisan narratives will be examined more sanely as to not repeat the failures of the past, that would be my hope, but what I am hoping not to see at this point is that we are setting ourselves up to be in line to dramatically teach this country a lesson on why we should have worked together because of a devastating 2nd wave that will increase the divisiveness and cost us all more than we than we ever would have needed to pay.
I really hope to be wrong, but I can not ignore that a reality check might be coming through a 2nd wave that is going to cause some soul searching before we finally develop the resources to ultimately defeat COVID-19.
Example:
