Losing the battle with the Pandemic: Natural Consequences as a result of ignorance, incompetence, and bad judgement

The state of Utah is a microcosm of what is happening around the world with the COVID-19 pandemic. The reaction to the initial wave of virus infections was quickly overcome with standard public health practices; closing business, prohibiting gatherings of all kinds, mandating masks, encouraging personal hygiene such as hand-washing and etc. The results were predictable. The incidence of viral infection started to go down. Unfortunately for the overall population, the leaders of our state and country vastly underestimated the effect of a highly contagious disease in a population with no immunity and no vaccines and abandoned these tested public health measures and went back to business as usual. 

Starting with a self-centered and rabidly political president and extending to a significant number of people who somehow believe that the small amount of good he accomplished in four years excused putting the entire country at risk from an uncontrolled pandemic, to state officials that are so afraid of the protests of hard-core so-called conservatives who threaten violent opposition to any public health restrictions at all, the governments of Utah and other states have abandoned taking any actions that might curb the spread of the disease. 

Around the world, we have seen graphic evidence of countries that have enacted stringent public health measures including shutting down their whole country, such as was recently done by Israel, and gotten control of the situation. We can't even mandate universal masks or take any other action that will really address the spread of the disease. 

Meanwhile, the country and the state are absorbed in politics and are paralyzed by a President who puts his personal agenda above the lives of his constituency. The virus doesn't care about your politics. It is killing people in my neighborhood, three people in the last week, and will continue to kill people until we follow the well-proven national health measures that we have known about for over a hundred years. 

Note: The Daily New Cases of the virus is merely an indicator of the problem, the real number to look at is the percentage of positives from the number of tests which, in Utah Valley where I live, is now over 25% of the tests given regardless of the number of tests.