Pandemic wake up call to America?

We watch in horror as new infections and new deaths reveal how horribly unprepared the US was for the pandemic. Not just unprepared, but mis-managed by a government that in three years was largely unconcerned about public health; indeed, dedicated to separating tens of millions from adequate health care. The result? Our 245,000 infections represent 24% of the world's total. Our 6,100 deaths, 11%. This from a land with only 4.4% of world population but a quarter of its wealth.

How can this be? For the past forty years we've been concentrating that great wealth in the coffers of a largely heartless elite with little empathy for the commons. They've used vast political, economic and media power to maintain and increase their status to the detriment of commons. While enlightened countries like China and South Korea are already beginning a return to some normalcy, America's dysfunctioning federal and state response continues to send the virus' lethal arc upward.

The virus is taking more than the nation's health and lives. It's now taking our vast wealth with hundreds of thousands of businesses shuttered, millions unemployed, and trillions of stock value evaporated.

During and after the recovery which will be long and devastating, we should use this catastrophe to examine our national conscience. Are we to remain a nation dedicated to seeing the 21st century become a new Gilded Age? Or will we will refocus our energy and will into making it the Age of the Common Man.