The pathology continues, as the collapse into chaos intensifies. One aspect of this mayhem is responding to it in an irrational way. A rational response would be to get information about it from reliable sources—rather than turning away from it. Having a sense of what is coming affords us time to prepare, as best we can, to minimize consequences once it does arrive.
The outside is where the novel corona virus is present and living. It is here that learning and gathering information about its nature, the character of its biographic cycle, and its current stage of development, is vital to the outcomes we seek—mitigating the consequences of what happens to us ‘here’.
This information is ‘out there’, and because it is ‘out there’ it seems less threatening. It doesn’t feel as personal as the on-the-ground experience of ‘here’. ‘Out there’ doesn’t feel real to us.
This makes for disorientation and confusion in the many feelings and imagined conceptions of what is important, of when and where it is and isn’t happening. So there are rational responses needed in both what is happening in the ‘outer’ now and to what preparations are needed here—treatment, isolation and organizational impact on facilities.
The ‘outer’ needs to be tracked and followed, which is a very difficult and expensive task to coordinate, and is dependent on the political leadership understanding what is needed, and accepting the extreme and intense difficulty of this task.
Unfortunately, rational thinking and understanding is not all that common among political leadership. An immediate response to fighting this epidemic is critical. Making such decisions is often delayed in a morass of ignorant conversation and a lack of understanding which provides delay—while the virus is continuing to grow and establish itself.
Time is the vital key to our defense and we need to gather relevant information and develop the knowledge and understanding to head off the natural course of the viral spread. The more we know about the novel corona virus, the better equipped we will be to prevent the disease—COVID-19.
Like Dr. David No, an award winning viral scientist, has stated, “Without testing we are blind”. If we can’t test, then we can’t track the patterning of the virus. We are hindered in our ability to make science based decisions to combat its spread. The relevant and immediate task is to measure the number of people getting the disease in order to track the places and the rate in which the virus is spreading. The only way to do this is to test every person, which also means providing the resources and equipment necessary to do so. We need our federal government to act swiftly with as much science based information as possible.
The ideal would be for testing to be readily available, free, and encouraged universally. Testing is the only way to gather the data. Without this data there is no practical way to obtain the critical knowledge needed to manage the virus and prevent the disease. This alone will have the greatest impact for treatment, care and prevention.
Only TESTING can reorganize the hysterical chaos of fear and reaction. If we can know what it’s doing, then we can know what we need to do to meet the challenge of our own defense.