In memory of the 1 million who have died
 

This is a somber moment as the U.S. passes the one million mark of Covid deaths. How I wish we could turn back the clock and make different decisions, individually and as a country. It is estimated that each person who died left behind 9 close family members. Considering that Covid deaths are unerreported, there are possibly something like 20 million Americans who are grieving for someone. A national trauma.

Hind sight is a wonderful thing, we locked down pretty early on in this pandemic, yet a million died, assuming that number is correct.

Not sure what more could have been done with the information at the time here. China understood early on the devastation this illness was causing, welding doors shut to keep people in their homes, yet China chose to keep quiet about it until a brave , now deceased Chinese doctor spilled the beans.

The US president at the time shut down travel from China as soon as it was understood how badly China was affected, only to be accused of racism and hate by the Speaker et al who was looking for political points. The speaker and other dem leaders encouraged people in this country to continue to gather. That was a pretty dumb move.

We learned a lot as this pandemic progressed. Mountains were moved with respirator manufacture, bureaucracy slashed in an effort to develop a vaccine, which was done in record time.

This was/is a devastating virus that killed many, no one asked for this, no one knew what it was in the beginning, and no one in their right minds thinks that every decision made would be a correct one.

Unfortunately, it is what it is. Hopefully we have learned and will handle the next one better. It would be nice to have a thorough debrief and analysis as to what was done correctly and where errors were made. Hopefully that can be done, but I doubt it considering the present political climate.

The truth is that diseases don't respond to politics, and sometimes overcome human behavior. As human population numbers and mobility increase... we become the perfect hosts.

Covid might not kill the next million as quickly as it killed the first million... but it will kill another million, and a million more after that.

Your last paragraph captures the goal and the problem very well. Here's an excellent piece on what Australia did better than the US...enabled by a more trusting political climate

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/w...id-deaths.html

Australia still has the collective mindset of the Greatest Generation.
The US, though it talks about MAGA, really is not supportive of returning to the Eisenhower years.

On that theme, and something you've written about before, it's worth noting that Australia has a conservative government. New Zealand, right next door, has a liberal government; and also did much better than the US with COVID.

We should not get caught up in political posturing on COVID. There are decent, well-thought out scientific approaches from both conservatives and liberals...and there's a whole bunch of grandstanding and working to undermine the credibility of experts that has gotten the US into much more trouble than it should have been in.

It isn't political.
Eisenhower happened to be Republican... but was an introvert focused on the collective well being rather than the individual.

I noted him because ''Make America Great Again'' is really a plagiarism of Ronald Reagan's ''Let's Make America Great Again''... which was speaking of the Eisenhower/Kennedy years. The Eisenhower era being the original ''when America was great'' was largely due to the collective mindset of general well being that infused the American population.

Bringing it back to the issue... the collective mindset of that time was so strong that it was rare to find someone that had not been inoculated against small pox. Even though small pox was not spreading like wildfire throughout the US, was not transmitted by respiration, and the US didn't have a confirmed active case of it after 1949... the inoculations when on until 1970. The small pox vaccine had to be renewed every ten years, and had a much higher risk profile than the covid vaccine.

Hogwash.

Our top leader was advised early on of implications. Did way too little way too late.

Thank you for this instructive historical perspective. Well said. I don't know much about the Eisenhower era. I mean, I've never studied it. However, I grew up under it and benefited greatly from it, including vaccinations, a first-class education in a small, nondescript town, secure home ownership for my lower-middle-class family, and affordable college education. People who experienced that era must find it hard to understand why we would willingly abandon the "general well being that infused the American population." I have said in other posts that that wasn't true for everyone---you had to be in the right place, at the right time, and of the right race and gender---but as someone who was lucky enough to benefit from the post World War II peace and prosperity, I can look back and say that for many of us, it was an idyllic age that I don't expect to see again in my lifetime. We certainly valued freedom in those days and loved our country---there were constant parades in small towns everywhere with lots of flag waving---but freedom was spoken of as a collective value, not so much as an individual right. It was not associated with personal gun ownership, but with democracy and well-being for all of us. Hence it would never occur to us to not get vaccinated, so as to protect everyone.

I don't have hard numbers going back that far...
But I think that gun ownership was greater in the Eisenhower years than now.

Not sure when it began, but hunting has suffered a long term decline nationally.

Not tracking on the “introvert” characterization of Ike. Successful Commanding Officers command with a balance of mission and the individual interest in mind, albeit more of a mission versus individual focus.
I’d separately offer that the propensity of available marketing and social media outlets available in todays climate could affect a more selfless personality such as Eisenhower’s, or anyones, to be more self serving.

Myers-Briggs was developed during the later half of WWII.

Eisenhower is considered an INTJ/ISTJ.

Being introverted isn't about being selfless.
Introverts tend to keep their own counsel. They don't draw energy and inspiration from large crowds like extroverts.

He shut down travel to and from China as soon as he understood what was going on and was called racist by the likes of you. A week or two later, Pelosi et al were in Chinatown urging people to come out and enjoy being together.
He was not the problem.

You can try to rewrite history, but it is all there contradicting you. Moreover, the "advisors" were repeatedly wrong, from the methods used initially to treat covid, to the insistence early on that masking was not effective, to ridiculing Trump for insisting a vaccine could not be approved in a short time.