In terms of COVID, we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. You do not even get to collect your Intertops casino bonus. Every citizen of every nation is now in the process of picking up the pieces of their lives to get ready to move forward.
But as the saying goes, “Those that do not know the past are condemned to repeat it.” So in order to truly move forward, we have to seriously look back on the past year and a half. What did the world do right? What did the world do wrong? If we were to write a World Wide Pandemic Handbook intended for all nations, what should we include in it, and what should be thrown in the garbage?
What was done right in terms of the COVID pandemic?
There is not one single country that can claim that they alone did all things correctly. Every country had something that they did right, and every country had something that they did wrong. So let’s start with what different countries did right that can be applied to a global scale.
China did batch testing
This is one area where China definitely did things correctly. They did batch testing of groups. If the whole batch tested negative, it could be considered that the whole group was negative. This allowed China to test whole cities in a fraction of the time it took other countries.
Maybe the whole testing of whole cities was overkill, but what about schools? Everybody was in lockdown, and then we sent them all to school together. Why not batch test each classroom, including the teacher? If the whole batch is clear, then you know that specific class is clear. The same could have been done on each floor of a nursing home. If the whole batch was clear, the floor could be considered clear.
Israel having each lockdown approved by the committee
The rules for the different lockdowns in Israel were the following. First, the people have to be given a warning, so they could get supplied to get them through the lockdown. Two, although the Prime Minister could recommend a lockdown, he did not have the power to issue a lockdown.
All opening and closing of lockdowns had to go through a committee. The committee consisted of the Education Ministry (to input how things would affect schools and children), the economic ministry (who provided input on how things would affect the economy), the health services ministry (that provided input on medical knowledge as well as how the hospitals were doing) — not sure who else was on the committee.
But with each lockdown (and opening) this group of people would argue for hours on end, going late into the night. Sometimes even going over several days. But it was definitely not dictatorial, as it was with NYC and Cuomo’s unilateral decision to put infected people into nursing homes.
There were also strict end dates, that had to be followed. If the prime minister wanted an extension, it had to again go through a committee involving different people that were in charge of different sides of the problem.
Israel used sports arenas and convention centers to administer vaccines
Everybody in Israel is required to be on some type of health insurance. You still have to pay for that health insurance, but you have to have health insurance. The government used sports arenas and convention centers to be vaccine administration locations. Since these locations already had large parking spaces and public transportation to them, there was not an issue of how to get the people to get their vaccine.
Even when that was not enough, Israel created mobile vaccination stations (picture mobile red cross blood donation ambulances) to bring the vaccine to the communities where the people were not going out to the standard vaccination centers.
Although in the US, nobody is required by law to have health insurance, a simple solution could simply be “bring your $35 and get your vaccination”.
Israel did not politicize response to COVID
During one of the lockdowns, Israel made group assembly restrictions apply to both protesters and prayer groups. The negative of that was that both sides “hated” Netanyahu. But the positive side was that the extremes on both sides hated Netenyahu equally. In other words, everybody was “in the same boat”.
Israel used a stoplight program
Each city (or neighborhood when talking about a large city) was tagged as either red, orange, yellow, or green. Green no major problems and red being the community needed to be in lockdown.
This is one of those that worked and did not work. For the communities that were in the green, yellow, and for the most part orange, they could go about their business with only a few restrictions (2-meter distance and wear a mask). But in red and approaching red cities, that had to be put in lockdown, while other communities were not in lockdown, there was resentment, anger, etc. A lot of communities against communities, fighting on where the problem in the spreading of the virus was.
What was done wrong in terms of COVID?
Making the use of hydroxychloroquine illegal
Making the use of hydroxychloroquine to a level where doctors were threatened with losing their license. The FDA made this treatment illegal because it did not work for patients after 5 days, and if the patient had other conditions, it could make things worse.
But many doctors found that when using a combination of hydroxychloroquine plus vitamin D, vitamin C, and zinc and levels that were higher than the standard recommended daily allowance, that is dramatically reduced the symptoms and prevented the virus from entering its worse stages.
It is one thing to say, “We have not done a double-blind clinical trial, so we cannot give full approval for use against COVID”, but making it illegal to a level where doctors lost their jobs and threatened with losing their professional license? That was overkill.
When clinical trials were able to be done, they found out that hydroxychloroquine did not make much difference, but the use of vitamin C, vitamin D, and zinc made a huge difference. But the people who were pushing for the use of these vitamins were also the same people who were pushing for the use of hydroxychloroquine with those vitamins, so “the baby was thrown out with the bathwater.”
It also made people distrust the FDA, so when the vaccines came out, people no longer trusted that the FDA had their best interests at heart.
One person in charge of too large of an area and given too much power
For the most part, the US system of a Governor has the final say in a state works out well. That person is voted into office, so he represents the will of the people, etc., etc.
But when dealing with a pandemic and the needs of NYC are going to be done thing (how do you deal with shutting down trains and cleaning them when there is not enough space to store the trains) vs. farm country of New York State (people are generally spread out except for small central business districts).
“If I were president of the United States” — (haha) — I would have divided the nation into 435 different areas, where each person in the house was given responsibility for their area along with the governor of their state and their two senators and the different mayors of the communities in their state. In theory, a representative should understand the makeup of its community. How many hospitals are there? How many senior centers? How many colleges (convert into temporary hospitals)? How many schools? How many libraries? How many community centers?
This would have eliminated making the governors the middlemen between the federal government and the local communities. If a community did not have supplies, they did not have to go through the governor and “take a back seat to NYC”. They could have called their House of Representative person, who would then have had direct contact with the Pandemic team.
If you were worried about politics, then there should have been Democrats and Republicans on the pandemic team.
Changing what was told to the people based on public polling
Fauci changed the level of vaccinations that were needed based on public polling. First, he said 50%, then 60%, then 70%, and finally 80%. He fully admitted that he did this based on public polling. But that was stupid. He just needed to quote the figures from the smallpox vaccine. For most countries, they did 80% vaccination. For India, which was the last country to be vaccinated, they did 30%, but they combined that with contract tracing.
Its also human nature to be unsure of the unknown. There were a group of people who did not want (or need) to be first in line. So they let others go first, and when they saw that those people were doing fine (and the vaccine was actually working), they then volunteered to get the vaccine. There is still going to be a group of people who will not get the vaccine, and that is to be expected.
Those people, who want to travel or go to large events, can be given the option of getting tested, doing contact tracing, and preventative higher doses of vitamins (that have been shown in double-blind clinical trials to work).
Changing the “rules” based on politics
Telling people that gathering in groups of 10,000 to protest is okay, but gathering in a group of 30 people for a birthday party is a health hazard. There is no logic, no common sense, and no legitimacy to that other than “politics”.
Once politics overrules the health and well being of the citizens as a whole, the citizens lose faith and trust in their “leaders” including the FDA, NIH, and CDC — who should have been screaming at the top of their lungs for the groups of 10,000 to stop their stupidity. It does not matter if it was a Trump Rally, a George Flyoid protest, or a funeral for a well-known person. A group of 10,000 people is a group of 10,000 people.
We are all humans, created the same. With zero biological differences between different groups of 10,000 people.
Summary
Realistically it is going to take 6 months for different countries to get their vaccinations to the citizens who want them. Then it will probably take another 1 or 2 for those who are waiting to see if the ones who took the vaccines start to grow horns. So at the end of the day, COVID is realistically going to be around for another 1 to 3 years.
So yes, this is still going to be an issue during the 2022 mid-term elections. But as Israel has already demonstrated, a country can have 100% paper ballots including dealing with COVID patients in hospitals, people in airports, etc. without having to resort to Dominion voting machines or mass mail-in ballots. Israel even has national ID cards (where the first one is free) that you have to show in order to vote — and get the vaccine because it is also your health insurance number.
My opinion on this whole thing, as long as my husband can go to work, my kids can go to school, and we can go to the stores that we want to go to, wearing a mask in crowded places and trying to keep a social distance of 2 meters does not bother me — even if I have already gotten the COVID-19 vaccine.