The coming pandemic has the potential to be the largest crisis that the world, our nation — and our community — has faced since World War II.
Today (March 13), the New York Times reported on a leaked CDC estimate that between 200,000 and 1.7 million people would die (That’s 15-75 deaths in Oneida). Our national preparation and response has been a colossal, appalling failure whose impacts have yet to be felt. Our response will be compared to China’s and South Korea’s in the years to come, and the comparison will not be kind. Because of the Federal failures, our state and local officials have had to lead. They are doing their best, but their preparation and response has also fallen short.
In the present pandemic, schools are perhaps the second most important public health organization in our community after our primary health care system. That’s because closing schools and eliminating other large gatherings at the very beginning of a pandemic-and keeping them closed- saves lives. The closings save lives by slowing the rate of transmission so that the primary health care system isn’t overwhelmed as the pandemic runs through the population. We do not want to be in the situation that Northern Italy is in now, where the hospitals do not have enough ventilators for all the critically ill and doctors must make the terrible decision about who lives and who dies.