Meanwhile in America it was our state governments not federal that started to impose school shut downs, as well as postponements to nonessential government functions. But prior to any of these actions we watched several events unfold that prove that once again we are behind the trend of preventative actions against the spread of Covid-19.
The first event that basically catapulted this entire virus into the global consciousness was the quarantine of a Diamond Princess cruise ship, which ultimately resulted in making the ship an incubator for the virus and stranding nearly 5,000 people on said ship. In total about 385 Americans were on the ship and flown back only after 14 of them tested positive for the virus. Those 14 people were allowed to fly on the same planes as unaffected people separated by a plastic sheet. (And here I thought we lived in the 21st century). Thankfully so far this action didn't end up furthering the spread of the virus but it undermined the idea of trying to keep those people who were infected under a suitable quarantine from healthy people. Then that's when the controversy on this action came about, the CDC came out and said they never would have advocated this move and actually said they would have recommended against returning the sick until a later flight or until they had received proper treatment. Later on Trump came out and said he would never authorized this action, but if he didn't who did?
The second event that seemed to really point to me that we have somehow fallen behind other countries when it comes to response times to things of this nature. Trump finally restricted travel from European Nations in an effort to curb the spread of the disease, the only problem with this was the fact that the virus was already here. It has reached as far inland as Colorado, it had affected several states on both the East and West coast. By now it was too late for travel bans to truly affect the spread of the virus. But hey it looks good on paper come re-election time. These restrictions on travel were brought down roughly 3 months from the first case, and a little over a month since the first death outside of China was reported. To me the utter lack of foresight us something that has plagued America for years. We tend to react slow, waiting to see how the rest of the world addresses whatever new issue befalls us. Whether it was terrorist actions in our past, or things of this nature even with information in hand our entire government simply drags their feet to a solution costing American people their lives, or their livelihoods.
It took another two months before states started to impose stay at home orders here and once again this was not a call made by the government but the governors themselves. There were several states or commonwealths that decided to shut down as early as Februrary but the bulk of our country was another 2 weeks behind shutting down in mid March. It has now been 6 weeks+ of stay at home orders and restrictions have begun to lift. This is likely an effort to start rebuilding our extremely volatile economy, and start to return to normalcy, but is it too early??
In Texas one of the first states to reopen reported 839 new cases already with numbers under the true amount due to asymptomatic people, and those yet to be tested. Yet here we are continuing to allow every state to reopen at their own pace, despite these numbers Texas continued an aggressive reopening plan with phase 2 about to begin that includes reopening daycares, bars, and breweries, as well increasing capacity in restaurants to 50% until phase 3 begins. At what point do the number of reported cases get high enough to slow down our plan to reopen?
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