A year in the life of the pandemic in the USA with the white elephant in the room

Getting to know the white elephant in your room

The elephant we dare not speak of is a nation without the infrastructure to serve the health care needs of all its residents in so-called “normal” times, let alone during a pandemic. To be clear, the USA does not have a broken health care system. There never was a system to begin with. If this pandemic does not make it clear we must prioritize our public health care systems in each state, must we next see COVID-19 morph into something deadlier like Ebola?

As you consume so-called news on your mobile, listening to updates on the pandemic, you may notice that all the countries doing the best with COVID-19 testing, contract tracing, support during quarantine, public buy-in of government health guidelines, timely hospital care and vaccine distribution will have one thing in common. Everyone has health care.

These countries (the USA not being one of them) invested in public health infrastructure and a medicare-for-all system (or something close to it, sometimes called “universal care”) where 100% of a country’s residents have guarantied health care. Everyone is covered and no one left out. (Sweden has had this system since 1955 for friggin’ 65 years!)

This would contrast with the fifty states where barriers to care are common, meaning families can’t access timely medical care, among other vital services for survival. If you wish to know what percentage of the families in your county can not easily access medical care, we have a survey to give you the answers.

Trust me on this one, to manage this pandemic or the next (possibly more deadly) one, we need a national system of care-for-all where 100% are 100% covered by a state-of-the-art medical system.

Happy News: Vermont will most likely be the first state with a universal health care system (fingers crossed). Then 49 states to go.

Mobilize! Survive! Thrive!

Please excuse any typos as I construct an article at 3am on only one cup of joe. These stories are mine and mine alone. I do not represent any organization here. Words and images ©Dominic Cappello but share with everyone you know. Questions? Push to front of reading list: 100% Community: Ensuring 10 vital services for surviving and thriving and Attack of the Three-Headed Hydras: Confronting Apathy, Envy and Fear on the road to saving humans and the future. Better yet, let‘s meet at the EYE bookcafe to share a latte and some bold ideas.