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Summary

The United States is grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, facing significant challenges in leadership, public health management, economic fallout, and societal impact, reflecting a broader crisis in governance and unity.

Abstract

The article paints a grim picture of America's struggle with the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the country's status as the global epicenter of the virus, with the highest death toll and job losses surpassing those of the Great Depression. It criticizes the federal government's response as disorganized, unscientific, and detrimental to the nation's health and economy. The piece underscores the stark contrast between the administration's claims and actions, particularly in terms of testing, stockpile management, and public health guidance. It also points out the rise in phishing, scams, and civil unrest, as well as the mental health crisis among healthcare workers and the public. The article suggests that the current approach to the pandemic has exposed deep flaws in the country's social fabric, governance, and international standing.

Opinions

  • The federal management of the COVID-19 crisis is perceived as clumsy, chaotic, shortsighted, and unscientific.
  • The White House's handling of the pandemic, including the briefings and policy decisions, is viewed as politically motivated and detrimental to public health.
  • There is a sentiment that the government has failed to provide adequate support to states and has ignored scientific advice, leading to preventable deaths and economic hardship.
  • The article implies that the administration has attempted to shift blame and avoid responsibility for its mishandling of the crisis.
  • The public's trust in leadership and each other is eroding, exacerbated by misinformation and a lack of transparency.
  • The premature push to reopen the economy despite public health concerns is seen as a reckless move that could worsen the pandemic's impact.
  • The pandemic has laid bare the nation's vulnerabilities, including its susceptibility to foreign disinformation campaigns and the prioritization of personal ambition over collective well-being.
  • The article suggests that the current crisis is a test of the nation's values and resilience, with a call to recognize the importance of unity and scientific expertise in overcoming the pandemic.

Language & Politics

We’re not in Kansas anymore

The American idiomatic desolation

Image by author

A picture is worth a thousand words.

A half-mast USA flag proclaims mourning, distress, and respect for the honorable loss, normally reserved for deaths of the military and leading citizens, in pursuit of an American cause.

We are in the middle of a viral pandemic war, and we currently hold the title, dismally, for the highest death count globally from this COVID-19 virus, and sadly have already surpassed records that portent like disasters: more coronavirus deaths (over 40%) in mere months than the recorded US military fatalities from the Vietnam War which lasted nearly 20 years and compared to every other US military conflict since; 26.5 million jobs (20.6% unemployment) lost through April, and counting, which is beyond the 15 million 20% figures of the Great Depression in 1932; highest conducted coronavirus testings globally, more than 8 million tests conducted, but as a percentage of our population, not as nearly at the top; and an unsustainable exponential increase in demand for assistance from food banks (having been supplying 11% of the US population prior to the pandemic but based on a recent poll may be depended on by 44% feared Americans).

The federal management of the COVID-19 crisis has been arguably ‘clumsy’, ‘chaotic’, ‘shortsighted’, ‘disjointed’, absent, ‘conflicting’, unscientific, and ‘crippling’, not to mention also has dangerously put the US military’s health at direct risk.

The White House has claimed they were blindsided by the onset of this new virus, in spite of contrary evidence of US intelligence from last November, and whatever credibility the White House administration held remained on thin ice as they continued to botch up and mismanage available testing from getgo to the present.

Then, the White House further muddied the waters by announcing their hoarding of the Strategic National Stockpile followed by even having the associated website (earlier saying otherwise) align officially online in writing. It appeared as a further stall in offering the needed support for all affected governors.

The final straw may have been the POTUS’ vague and carelessly worded suggestion to disinfect ourselves with humanly toxic chemicals as a virus cure and the washing of his hands of compliant followers. So as innocent folks took to those words literally, damage control necessarily ensued by many professionals, institutions and corporations to warn observers of the true dangers of such improper advice.

The white noise has been this hemming and hawing pandemic response, the daily White House briefings dog and pony show (which insiders begged the POTUS to cancel for the sake of improving his political outlook), the media drama, egg in our face as the White House continues to blow its own trumpet while we flaunt the highest global infection number, that we are left convinced that our government has done a hack job and we are flying by the seat of our pants. Then the highly debated premature reopening of the country by virtue of the the tanked economy without sufficient testing and against the public health NIAID director’s recommendations and with reluctance and caution of many governors, and in the midst of growing alarming new cases and deaths of infected children in 15 states, should be humble pie if nothing else for the Trump administration to swallow when it’ll emerge we’ve shot ourselves in our own foot and the entire country is now being further taken out of the frying pan and into the fire with greater consequences.

Meanwhile, hackers and scam artists are taking advantage and preying on the fears and anxieties of everyone else, and conspiracy theorists, protestors, and critics alike have unsurprisingly taken matters into their own hands; finding rationale to counter efforts made by even keel governors to disrupt stay-at-home orders, block healthcare providers in serving the public, and even wield firearms or make death threats towards doctors (Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases with over 50 years of medical work experience, no exception).

Some of the public are rightfully down in the dumps still awaiting their first stimulus checks, and many overworked and under-protected healthcare workers are mentally strained, some even committing suicides and not accounted for in the national death toll numbers.

Even a stone’s throw away, the Mexican city, Nogales, on the border with Arizona, has resorted to sanitizing tunnels for entering US travelers.

We’ve entered a Twilight Zone of sorts where the Frankensteinian heightened general public’s distrust for each other, psychological meltdowns, disregard of scientific advice, and well-being of others have run amok.

In a week from partial relaxing of restrictions, a 1000% increase in COVID-19 infections in Tennessee and Kansas counties would now be the backdrop of today for Dorothy Gale, the fictional character, in her state of Kansas.

Indeed, ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore.’

While debating like a Monday morning quarterback, we may come to eventually recognize the cannibalizing of ourselves politically, economically, and morally, during this pandemic, and the individual blind ambitions that inadvertently propelled a self-fulfilling prophecy for our country that will reap what we sow and we eventually have to pay the piper; we may justifiably critique ourselves then that we were penny-wise, pound-foolish with rushed short-sighted decisions. But beyond the economics of stimulus bailouts, severe prolonged shut-downs, starving families, rising infections and the death toll, our current handling of this pandemic has sorely exposed our Achilles’ heel, and our band-aid solutions miss the forest for the trees.

If we read between the lines, the tip of the iceberg is the threat to our preeminence of our way of life, our already undermined constitutional values, and programs to implant divisiveness against our unity by common enemies during crises; when we turn a blind-eye to shady quid pro quo or we no longer are capable of separating the wheat from the chaff of lies, propaganda, disinformation from our so-called ‘friends’, we damage our collective national self-interests down the road, and in the long run.

It won’t be a walk in the park for the foreseeable future, and these are the times that test men’s souls. While the hope is that adversity makes strange bedfellows, we’d also be encouraged knowing that if the contemporary Dorothy Gale were leading us to ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road’ hic et nunc, it would only lead back to ourselves and all ‘the wonderful things [we can] do’ together to keep our flag waving proudly.

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America
Wizard Of Oz
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