Government and public reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic has been a series of fits and starts.
In the theater world and the military, this is known as “hurry up and wait,” a concept that one must rush in a fury to complete tasks by a deadline, then wait impossibly forever, well past the opening curtain for the show or the battle to begin.
First, in the spring, we were told that we had to “flatten the curve.” Government officials assured us that if we merely stayed at home for four weeks, we would stave off the COVID-19 pandemic, lower hospital occupancy and return to life as normal in the late spring.
Of course this is not how pandemics work nor is it supported by science or history. We opined back then that “flatten the curve” was more semantics than biology and that after what might be a brief success, the pandemic would surge again and “flatten the curve” would disappear from our discourse — and looking at search term history, it virtually disappeared from Google by the start of May.
There are many medical professionals who argued that “flatten the curve” was overly simplistic and poorly explained and executed — namely that such action would only work if it lasted until the end of the pandemic, not an arbitrary month, but it sounded politically expedient and wise.
But rather than complete its intended goal, we launched into lockdowns with such little foresight regarding financial support for small businesses and workers who would be affected by shutting down that it effectively devastated the economy in the spring and soured nearly all public opinion against such measures in the future.
Had officials instead waited to adapt fiscal and government goals to accommodate a potential closure and then conducted wiser and safer lockdowns in the early summer with the financial backing and support to alleviate the predicted and expected losses, the public would view such lockdowns in the future as something not socially detrimental but medically necessary and financially survivable.
But governments are rarely good about forethought but experts of afterthought — while the Titan Prometheus brought mankind fire, his brother Epimetheus brought mankind government.
So when the predicted second rise of cases began in the autumn as Americans retreated indoors due to the weather, the prospect of another lockdown was almost unthinkable politically and economically. One was imposed in California, but based on the increase in cases far outstripping nearly every other state in the country except Texas, its success is negligible.
It’s hard to measure how much worse things could be in a state like California when things there are already so terrible.
Like “flattening the curve,” government officials from the White House down yearned for another solution like a long-sought-after vaccine, the literal cure-all of a pandemic, which, when discovered and produced would literally cure our problems, both physical and economic.
So-called Operation Warp Speed pre-produced millions of vaccine doses in anticipation of emergency authorization by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which occurred just before Christmas.
Government officials assured us the vaccines would begin rolling out and by the end of the year some 20 million Americans would be initially inoculated against COVID-19.
As of the first week of January, that number is closer to 2 million, 1/10th the promised number.
Based on the vaccination rollout during the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009, Kris Ehresmann, director of the Minnesota Department of Health, Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Prevention and Control Division, said the proper way to roll out a vaccine or a cure to the public is to under-promise and over-deliver — in much the same way Chief Montgomery Scott managed the warp engines and repairs aboard the USS Enterprise. After all, he was a “miracle worker.”
Locally, while the vaccine has been used to inoculate staff at Verde Valley Medical Center and other medical facilities, there are still hundreds of doses sitting idle waiting for government officials to allow the next phases to begin inoculations.
Meanwhile, patients at assisted living centers and nursing homes remain unvaccinated, hoping that during the delay they don’t catch COVID and die. The rest of us in the general population in good health and under 65 won’t even be considered for vaccinations until the late summer at the earliest.
Engage warp engines … eh … whenever.
Christopher Fox Graham
Managing Editor
