My wife and I (a retired ER nurse and ER physician, respectively), were to chair a Task Force at our church to guide a safe “reopening” of the use of the sanctuary. As luck would have it, our church owns a beautiful and rustic 18-acre parcel of land within a mile of the current church campus on which we are too poor to have built anything more than a nice multi-purpose pavilion. We have successfully parlayed this circumstance into providing a “drive-in church” for our 150-member congregation. Some are longing to get back to more traditional interaction during services in the sanctuary, but we have an aging congregation, which coincidentally includes the longest living heart transplant patient and the longest living liver transplant patient in Florida. I hope that we and our church-mates are blessed with enough wisdom to make correct and safe decisions.

The U.S. has surpassed the ominous milestone of over 100,000 Americans who have died of Covid-19. I have missed consoling words by the “Consoler in Chief.” President Reagan consoled us after the Challenger Space Shuttle blew up on January 28, 1986. President Bill Clinton consoled us after the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995. President George Bush both consoled us and stirred us to fight terrorism on September 11, 2001. President Barack Obama wept as he consoled us after the small children were gunned down in their elementary school in Connecticut on December 14, 2012. We all need some soothing words and reassurance from our current chief executive right now.

Leadership involves three important actions. First, leaders must tell the truth. Second, they must take some responsibility for what is happening to our country. And finally, they must keep all of us accurately informed….

I am astonished that in the U.S., in 2020, in the face of an admittedly cataclysmic socioeconomic catastrophe caused by coronavirus, we somehow cannot prevent dairy farmers from pouring fresh harvested milk down the drain and hog farmers from euthanizing their herds because they cannot get their production sold, all while cars in many urban areas are lined up for miles around food pantries with recently unemployed citizens who cannot buy food. Many of these people are victims of the poorly operating unemployment compensation systems in states like Florida.

Hindsight may be 20/20, but dismantling the Pandemic Task force 2 years ago was not a good move. Recently, Christi Grimm was fired from her position as Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services when she surveyed over 300 hospitals in 50 states and found that “their most significant challenges centered on testing and caring for patients with Covid-19 and keeping staff safe.” At the time of writing this article, about 300 healthcare workers have died from Covid-19. Nearly 60,000 healthcare workers have become infected. Some believe Covid-19 deaths among healthcare workers is under reported and that there may be as many as 600 total deaths. Many healthcare workers in EDs and ICUs are still complaining that they do not have sufficient PPE. It is only fair to add that we healthcare workers have to be conscientious with our use of what’s available. There is also the case of a nurse who rushed to the bedside of a patient who suddenly stopped breathing. She was wearing a surgical mask; not the safer N-95 mask. Just 14 days later, she died of Covid-19!

I also do not understand why in 2020 the U.S. is so befuddled as to who has Covid-19 and who doesn’t. While Congress throws trillions of dollars into the mix to try and help the economy stay solvent, I would have liked to have seen many more resources directed towards testing and tracing viral spread. I believe that there has been very poor information exchange to Americans about testing options. Many front line healthcare workers have complained that they have not been able to get Covid-19 tests for themselves, which adds to the stress on them for their personal health and the potential of spreading disease to their families. In an ideal world, all humans should be tested on a regular basis while we do not yet have a vaccine available for protection. In other countries such as South Korea and Germany, their populations have fared far better than we have in the U.S. with respect to Covid-19 disease.

Our healthcare workers are our true heroes today. I thought it very fitting that they were honored during the recent Memorial Day holiday. A special tribute goes out to those who gave the last full measure of their lives like the war heroes they in fact are. I only wish that our leaders in Washington and in our State Houses will remember the three elements of leadership, namely honesty, accountability and transparency. In doing so, their leadership will honor the work of these modern day, non-military and self-sacrificing workers who fight to save lives on the new front lines in our ED’s and hospitals. Godspeed! ■