Will we be ready this time? Will we have learned anything from the disaster in 2020?
Given who’s back in office, I’m gonna go with No. The decimated HHS is run by RFK, Jr., and Trump himself has never seen the use for preparedness or research or anything that might make sense to most rational human beings.
The next pandemic—respiratory or hemorrhagic—will likely not take us by surprise but will nonetheless find us shamefully unprepared, and largely because of a mind-numbing, inexplicable lack of a sense of urgency.
Vaccine hesitancy—if there’s even a vaccine available—will once again rear its ugly head, fueled by Fox News and other outlets—not to mention the head of HHS himself. We’ll argue about “freedom” versus precautions, we’ll all be expected to ignore the man behind the curtain, the elephant in the room, in the form of a total abandonment of reason in the face of ongoing threats.
We’ll have little in the way of defense to depend on, including enough knowledgeable nurses and doctors and other staff, because they fled the fields after the Covid nightmare and have not returned. A shortage of PPE would be the least of our worries.
America has been commandeered by a collection of misfits and impostors motivated by profit margins, quack philosophies of governance, and blinding self-interest. The way forward looks fraught with blind spots. Our fall looks to be precipitous.
3 Cents' 