Well before Covid-19 emerged, medical researchers warned that the rapid increase of Alzheimer’s disease in older populations would lead to the next “pandemic.”
In many respects, they were right. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, nearly 10 percent of the U.S. population over 65 years old suffers from that progressively destructive brain disorder. The same organization estimates that the percentage afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease will more than double by the year 2050.
Famed Economist Thomas Sowell has long remarked that “Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.” He might need to add Millennials to this paltry list.
A recent Bloomberg opinion column by Andreas Kluth argues that the economic hardships stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic are “turning Millennials into socialists.” Arguing that younger generations “keep getting shafted by our country’s existing policies,” Kluth fears Millennials have inadvertently fallen “prey to political snake oil such as rent controls or wealth taxes” and are calling for more government control into our lives.
It has been over three years since Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States of America. During his first run for the Oval Office, he vowed to take on drug companies and lower the cost of prescription drugs. With less than one-hundred days until the 2020 presidential election, he has yet to keep his promise.
Hoping to make up for lost time, President Trump recently signed four executive orders to lower the prices for many important drugs. He announced last month, “I’m signing four sweeping executive orders that will lead to a massive reduction in drugs costs” and “completely restore the prescription drug market.”
Mindy Clark of Sarasota, Florida, drove to a COVID-19 testing site at Manatee Rural Health because she thought she might have contracted the virus. At the drive-thru testing center, she was told to take the test only if she had experienced symptoms. She drove away before being swabbed.
Two days later, she received a phone call informing her she tested positive. To have the erroneous diagnosis stricken from her record, she was required to get retested.
As new Covid-19 cases continue across the U.S., many states are preparing for a potential second wave of outbreaks and reinstated lockdown measures. Arizona hospitals are enacting emergency plans to accommodate a rapid influx of new infections. Florida has ordered bars to stop serving alcohol (after allowing them to reopen less than a month ago). Texas Governor Greg Abbot has stopped all reopening phases, ordered bars to close (again), and reinstituted stringent size limits on public gatherings.
But not all recent developments are bad news.
This May, President Trump unveiled Operation Warp Speed, a partnership between federal regulatory agencies and private drug producers that aims to develop and distribute a Covid-19 vaccine by January. The president described the project’s lofty goal of achieving a pioneering scientific discovery in record-breaking time as “unlike anything our country has seen since The Manhattan Project.”
Despite the incredible challenge, many believe Operation Warp Speed will succeed. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said, “President Trump’s vision for a vaccine by January 2021 will be one of the greatest scientific and humanitarian accomplishments in history, and this is the team that can get it done.” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the nation will have a vaccine by early next year.
President Trump has tried seemingly everything to lower prescription drug prices.
In 2018 alone, he established an international pricing index to prevent overcharging from foreign drug producers, targeted drug rebates between producers and middlemen, and granted Medicare Part D plans more authority to negotiate drug prices. Despite these and other efforts, the prices for thousands of drugs continue to increase.
At the time of peak lockdown, nearly 94 percent of the U.S. population was placed under stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of Covid-19. Currently, every state is working toward ending, or already has ended, their stay-at-home measures.
Lifting the lockdown has provided many benefits. Foremost, the U.S. economy climbed out of a severe downturn, adding nearly 2.5 million jobs and reducing the unemployment rate from 14.9 percent to 13.3 percent. Despite widespread predictions of a long recovery period, some are calling recent economic turmoil the shortest recession in U.S. history.
Rebeckah Jones worked for the Florida Department of Health’s Geographic Information team. One of her greatest responsibilities was to develop and maintain the Florida Covid-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard. The dashboard provides Floridians with timely information on the number of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities at the state and county level.
Despite receiving considerable praise for her work on the dashboard, Jones was recently removed from the project and fired from her position. Shocked and frustrated, Jones lamented, “I worked on it alone, sixteen hours a day for two months, most of which I was never paid for, and now that this has happened I’ll probably never get paid for.”
In late March, California became the first state to issue mandatory “shelter in place” orders. By mid-April, nearly 94 percent of the U.S. population was under order to stay at home.
Nearly three months later, millions are still desperate to get back to their lives. Protest rallies held to “reopen the economy” have emerged across the country, even when gathering can result in criminal charges.