LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Just admire how lucky we all are

Posted

To the editor:

ProPublica is an interesting is an interesting television news/documentary organization that mostly airs on PBS every week — unfortunately, somewhat late, at about 10 p.m.

A recent documentary, “Two Coasts. One Virus. How New York Suffered nearly 10 Times the Number of Deaths as California” was a very interesting piece about how two states handled the same problem differently.

Although slightly more liberal in its viewpoint, like The Atlantic magazine, I respect good journalism, whether it comes from either liberal or conservative journals such as the National Review or the American Spectator. Just like the few well-made, practical, sensible car models produced every year, they — along with The Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Bloomberg, BBC News and Scientific American remain reliable sources of news and information in a world now polluted with dozens of fanatical shock jock commentators and sensationalistic news readers.

This documentary was on how the governors of the east and west coast states have handled the pandemic differently. It must never be forgotten that as far as the so-called SARS-CoV-2 timeline is concerned when China finally became aware of their serious problem, they waited weeks to inform the World Health Organization of its findings. And even more disturbing is the fact that this virus has been proven to have spread to Europe as early as Dec. 27, two days after the Christmas holiday.

So perhaps the Chinese health care system is not as advanced or reliable as has been assumed by the world’s medical community.

As concerns the response to this pandemic from our federal, state and local (big city) government, it appears that our politicos have made some very bad — and very good decisions — with mixed results. However, it must be remembered that since World War I and the horrific 1918 flu pandemic, our nation has been, for more than a century, safe, secure and hygienized. Unlike the Europeans following World War II, our citizens are not dealing with massive homelessness, a destroyed infrastructure, famine, and other long-term illnesses such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, depression, physical disability, and other psychological trauma.

So with these thoughts in mind, I am now caustically laughing when I think that, only three months ago, we average Americans, commentators, journalists, and not-so-comedic late-night television hosts seemed to be content complaining about the most trivial of things — every hour, every day, week after week. Not one of them actually thinking about how lucky and spoiled we American people are.

That, of course, was just before this very dangerous and threatening pandemic invaded and attacked our homeland.

So now we all belatedly know what it’s like to live in an impoverished Third World country, where deadly diseases lurk in the water and air, in tainted food, and are spread by airborne blood-sucking insects. We have finally relearned that natural forces still have the power to instantly destroy us, cripple our advanced society, and bring us death and destruction with unabated and unmerciful force.

Hopefully we will ascertain information from this recent epidemic, gain new respect for science and nature, and learn to appreciate the limited time given to us to love, respect, admire our loved one and beautiful blue planet.

Lou Deholczer

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Lou Deholczer,

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