Member-only story
Covid-19 is Kicking Our Ass While We Await a Hail Mary
The opponent is running up the score and the U.S. counts on one big play but a new coach promises to change the momentum
Beating a pandemic requires a serious game plan, offensive and defensive schemes well understood by scientists and health experts. And while fans of a new head coach may cheer the impending fresh strategy against the coronavirus, Team America is way behind and all our key players are expected to remain on the sidelines while Covid-19 runs up the already morbid score and carries its momentum into what, optimistically, might be considered the second half.
New coach, new strategies
President-elect Joe Biden promises a pandemic game plan conceived and then led by a scientifically minded coaching staff he’s already assembling.
The playbook is sure to script an obvious set of initial plays built on the fundamentals of virus blocking and tackling that epidemiologists and other infectious-disease experts deem critical to making the population healthy and thereby enabling a healthy economy.
We’ll look at the ideal playbook below. But frustrating as it might be for Team America in the meantime, there’s little hope of any momentum shift before inauguration day on Jan. 20.
The Hail Mary
Meanwhile, Pfizer announced today that its potential star player—a vaccine candidate that is one of many being developed by several pharma teams—appears to be a really strong contender.
Yet no matter how big an impact this as-yet unproven player might turn out to have, we’re months away from it being suited up and ready to enable a whole new play against the coronavirus.
Optimism is warranted, for this and other potential vaccines, but here’s the dilemma:
Relying on a game-winning play that’s not even in the playbook yet is akin to punting on first down and playing your third-string defense. Covid-19 is scoring easily, and even the most amazing Hail Mary in the history of disease prevention stands to merely end a huge loss (of life) on a high note. Consider:
