President Trump urges all of us to be calm about the coronavirus.
“We’re prepared and we’re doing a great job with it and it will go away, just stay calm,” Trump said, “Everybody has to be vigilant and has to be careful but be calm, it’s really working out, and a lot of good things are going to happen.”
I tend to agree. The reason is that we, along with millions of individuals, families, businesses, churches, nursing homes, hospitals and government agencies, are doing everything we know to do.
Personally, we have suspended attending our church dinners, we wash our hands a lot, we don't plan to travel, and we started using a grocery service that doesn't require us to enter the store.
We could label each activity an Infection Intercept Point -- IIP, if I were a government bureaucrat. Right now millions of IIPs are being put in place.
Remember: Not too long ago we were worried that we Americans are too clean, that our obsession with killing germs was actually making us sicker.
Megan McArdle, a fine reporter, writes in The Washington Post:
Despite early exposure, Singapore and Hong Kong have kept their caseloads low, not by completely shutting down large swaths of their economies as China did but through aggressive personal hygiene and “social distancing.” South Korea seems to be getting its initial outbreak under control using similar measures. If we do the same, we can not only keep our hospitals from overloading but also buy researchers time to develop vaccines and therapies.
She encourages you to create your own IIPs.We are all in this together. It is your responsibility to keep America safe by following the CDC guidelines, just as much as it is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s or President Trump’s responsibility to lead us to safety. And until this virus is beaten, we all need to act like it.
Wash your hands!