OPINION: Accelerating America’s Response to COVID-19

Accelerating America’s Response to COVID-19 America is a diverse nation whose people hold a wide variety of beliefs and values. But surely, we can unite behind a national effort to defeat this virus and rebuild our national economy. Surely… Steve Cohen State of the Planet

President-elect Biden said he would urge Americans to mask-up for his first 100 days in office. Let’s use that same time frame to complete a national vaccination project, and vaccinate America by the end of April instead of by September as many are now projecting. It is time to stop this flabby, meandering federal effort to attack this disease and focus on producing all forms of public health capacity: Encouraging masks and social distancing, testing, tracing, isolation, treatment and vaccination. We need an aggressive, all-hands-on-deck mobilization to end this mess, with the new president calling on all Americans to do their part to drive down this disease. Let’s replace the infection and death data on cable news with data on the number of people vaccinated.

America has confronted daunting challenges before, in fact, today is the 79th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. While we are a different nation than the one that fought in World War II, we have more than enough of the wealth, organizational capacity, ingenuity and human resources needed to fight this war.  What is missing is leadership, unity and a sense of mission. The mobilization of America in World War II is worth remembering. ...

I think we are capable of producing billions of doses of the vaccine packed in little glass vials along with syringes and shipping them to every zip code in America. We can rapidly make the freezers and dry ice we need to ship and store the vaccine. Look at what our grandparents achieved 80 years ago. Again, what has been missing during this pandemic is determined leadership and a sense of common purpose. When the virus hit last spring, it came to places like New York and California first, giving the middle of the country the sense that it wasn’t their problem. When we were treated to the spectacle of the COVID-infected American president minimizing the seriousness of the virus and politicizing masks and social distancing, the odds of developing a determined national response to the virus seemed to evaporate.

Sadly, as our public health experts have told us from the start, this highly contagious virus would eventually spread throughout the nation. In the past month, it has done just that. Last week, over 11,000 people died from this virus. Our total number of deaths is fast approaching 300,000. The acceleration of the virus from Thanksgiving travel has not yet hit. Hospitals in many states are filling up fast and California is implementing its second lockdown. It would seem that the timing may be right for a more determined and aggressive national approach to combatting COVID-19.

While America faces economic, environmental and equity challenges that are deep and profound, none can be seriously addressed until we defeat this virus. The Biden administration must focus on pandemic relief as a singular top priority. Joe Biden’s moderation and empathetic personality might or might not be what you’d order up to lead a great national project, but he must rise to the occasion and use this crisis to unite this nation.

The national effort must not accept a slow and meandering pace of vaccination.

Resources must be provided to every state to implement rapid vaccinations free of charge to all. A huge communication initiative must be undertaken to encourage Americans to get vaccinated despite their mistrust of government and of the vaccine itself. ...