Why always doom and gloom?
During this trying time with people not working, losing their savings, the retirement accounts crashing, you would think there would be an effort to bring as much good news as possible. When the President spoke of things will get better, there are some promising treatments that we are looking at, and this epidemic will go away, syndicated columnist Donald Lambro just could not give any good news a chance. In typical naysayer style, he immediately attacked everything the president said.
From there, he produced statistic after statistic of just how bad it is. Over 100 people died he proclaimed, cases rose by 33% overnight, the stock market is in free fall and all of it is the Presidents fault. There won’t be enough respirators and masks and other protective clothing and in addition to scarring the crap out of people, Don wants to lay the blame directly on the Trump administration.
Results don’t lie fortunately and over half the people of our country think this administration is doing a dam good job. People like to hear things will get better, companies are ramping up production of equipment and protective clothing, masks, and test kits that actually work. We also like to hear our companies and companies around the world are working as hard and fast as they can to develop a vaccine and other treatments for this virus. We have heard lots of positive things from our Health systems on how they are preparing. One system reported since cases have not ramped up, they are going ahead with elective surgeries. Our local hospitals, health care personnel, first-responders are all ramping up to keep us safe and to care for us if we should need them.
We are all trying to do the best we can to follow the experts advice on how to beat this disease. We all know it is serious and people will die from this virus. As of 3/22 there are 371 cases in Pennsylvania. Here in our area 31 Allegheny, Beaver 3, Westmoreland 4, Washington 5, Fayette 1 and Greene 0. Nationwide there have been 201 deaths out of 15,000 plus cases nationwide. As bad as that is, over 22,000 people have died from the seasonal Flu this year.
Doom and gloom does not work. Bring the good news. Report what is happening and encourage people to be patient. We are hoping all the things we are doing will prevent the spike in cases that has happened elsewhere. For Western Pa. we are very lucky so far and if don’t see a rapid increase in cases in the next week we will be on the road to normalcy and that will be welcome good news for everyone.
Jim Blair
Rostraver Township