Dying in a Leadership Vacuum

Why has the United States handled this pandemic so badly? We have failed at almost every step. We had ample warning, but when the disease first arrived, we were incapable of testing effectively and couldn’t provide even the most basic personal protective equipment to health care workers and the general public. And we continue to be way behind the curve in testing. While the absolute numbers of tests have increased substantially, the more useful metric is the number of tests performed per infected person, a rate that puts us far down the international list, below such places as Kazakhstan, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia, countries that cannot boast the biomedical infrastructure or the manufacturing capacity that we have.2 Moreover, a lack of emphasis on developing capacity has meant that U.S. test results are often long delayed, rendering the results useless for disease control.

Let’s be clear about the cost of not taking even simple measures. An outbreak that has disproportionately affected communities of color has exacerbated the tensions associated with inequality. Many of our children are missing school at critical times in their social and intellectual development. The hard work of health care professionals, who have put their lives on the line, has not been used wisely. Our current leadership takes pride in the economy, but while most of the world has opened up to some extent, the United States still suffers from disease rates that have prevented many businesses from reopening, with a resultant loss of hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of jobs. And more than 200,000 Americans have died. Some deaths from Covid-19 were unavoidable. But, although it is impossible to project the precise number of additional American lives lost because of weak and inappropriate government policies, it is at least in the tens of thousands in a pandemic that has already killed more Americans than any conflict since World War II.

Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.

Dying in a Leadership Vacuum

I put this in the medical forum because this post is mostly about The New England Journal of Medicine and the medical community. Both at one time were highly respected.

I know the story at the link is just an editorial. But it is an editorial form editors at The New England Journal of Medicine and published in The New England Journal of Medicine. After reading the story, they may as well of titled it, Vote out the President he killed Americans and a lot of them were black. I do agree with a lot in the third and last quote from the story above. Lots of people need to be voted out, at the very least.

The medical community has gone from hero to zero in about 6 months IMO. I have lost respect for that community during this pandemic.

I guess the loss of respect started around the time I found out how fast some doc's were putting people on vents and why. I know there are good people in the medical community... very few spoke out.

Then they started putting covid on the death certificate to get the government money. We saw members of the medical community flat out lie to the public. Politicians lying is one thing, medical personal doing it is a violation at many levels.

originally posted by: LookingAtMars
Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment.

The CDC has an 11$ billion annual budget and there were no masks ready to be sent for disease control. They had one job... To control disease, and they had nothing prepared to mitigate disease whatsoever. In my opinion covid has been overhyped and the numbers skewed for political reasons, but regardless there is some very real inadequacies that became apparent if there ever were some devastating disease that killed, for example, even 10% of the population.

The fact is the disease is not that deadly, and only 6% of the accounted covid deaths were solely deaths from covid without comorbidity. The 200,000 number is very deceptive for that fact alone. The thing that really sets off an alarm in my mind is that the government generally doesn't care about people's well-being (there are plenty of toxic things allowed to be fed to our entire population) so I see there must be some sort of deeper motive. Surely enough it is a very common talking point for the left-wing to say how many people died all thanks to Trump, but that is ridiculous. If anything, the amount of suffering and financial loss (besides for the very rich) which is devastating many people, and our attempts to bailout people and large private entities will inevitably cost everyone much more in the long run.

Leadership should not be tainted by political fervor, but that seems to be all that's left any more.

a reply to: cooperton

I can't believe the CDC and other groups and organizations like that blew it as bad as they did. Thank God it wasn't something like smallpox.

It must of been purposeful or there was some kind of sabotage or something.

There is very little integrity left in the United States today. This, of course, is to be expected as relativism has become the standard of morality and ethics. Once everything is relative, there is nothing left by which to measure such existentially critical principles like morality and ethic; everything goes out the window and it's all about dying with the most toys.

a reply to: LookingAtMars

I can't believe the CDC and other groups and organizations like that blew it as bad as they did.

What , the same CDC that accidentally dumped a flesh eating virus in a major waterway in Georgia ?
Way upstream from the CDC?
THAT CDC?