Eight months. No learning. No leadership.

Friday, March 13, 2020.

That’s the day the Covid-19 pandemic really began for my family. Even though we knew it was coming by then, that was the day my kids came home from school, not to return for the remainder of the 2019-20 school year.

Very little learning got done after that despite teachers’ best efforts to deliver distance learning via the Internet.

Friday, November 13, 2020.

Today, eight months later, our so-called leaders (as a group) have proven they’ve done very little learning, either.

When the numbers – infection rates, positivity rates, hospitalizations, deaths – get as bad as they have been over the past several weeks, it’s time to take decisive preventative actions. Elected officials should have learned by now that, with Covid-19, waiting until symptoms show up in a given group of people, infections accelerate in a specific town or state, or deaths rise to even more shocking levels is too little too late.

As a nation we should be closing schools, cancelling church services, stopping high school and collegiate athletics, mandating masks with financial penalties for failure to comply, sending workers home.

Because the United States of America is now, to quote a national health journalist, in “a humanitarian crisis.”

Doctors Without Borders is here. Doctors Without Borders, here, in the United States of America. Surreal.

And winter hasn’t even really started yet. As the weather gets colder we’ll be inside more and more, the virus will spread faster and faster, and this crisis will get worse and worse.

We need action now, not two weeks or a month from now.

Eight months, no learning….

Surreal.

Green outlined graphic indicating copyright 2019 Martin C. Fredricks IV

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Martin C. Fredricks IV

Martin C. “Red” Fredricks IV here. I’m husband to an amazing woman who is also my best friend, dad to three outstanding kids, Fargoan (North Dakota, that is), proud introvert, veteran messaging strategist/copywriter, blogger (https://ivwords.com) nonprofit founder (https://theclimateknights.org/) and big-time reader. As they say, if you're gonna write good stuff, you have to read good stuff. A ginger, too - ergo the "Red" - although some of it's going white. Cinnamon-Sugar, I call it. Tattooed to boot; seven so far. At age 54, I'm stilling crankin' AC/DC & Metallica, but now and again I spin some Eric Church and Black Uhuru, too. I love hanging out with my (much) better half, spending time with our kids, writing, hiking, riding my mountain bike and reading.

2 Comments

The Rise & Fall of Our COVID Fortress - IV Words - The Progressive Perspective · February 7, 2023 at 4:43 pm

[…] our family, the COVID-19 pandemic began in earnest on March 13, 2020. Friday the 13th; oh-so-appropriate. That afternoon my kids came home from school […]

I Have Been Chosen - IV Words - The Progressive Perspective · March 9, 2021 at 2:23 pm

[…] we understood by then that it was coming and it was going to seriously impact our lives. We mark it as beginning for us because my kids came home from school that afternoon and did not return for the remainder of […]

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